In the greenish office light, his pretty, powdered face looked rather strange. But he was very respectful. And properly frightened.
“I have very few papers for you, Officer Gris,” he said. “The office is quite a confusion. Bawtch is not there and two others seem to be gone. There is a new chief clerk but he doesn’t know anything much.”
Ah! Too-Too had succeeded! My old enemy Bawtch was dead! And the forgers, too! What marvelous news!
“So I just have these few blank forms for you to stamp in case they have an emergency.”
He had them right with him, only a few pounds of paper. I took them. I got out my identoplate and stamped them then and there. It only took about twenty minutes instead of half an afternoon. How much lighter the work would be, now that Bawtch was in some unknown grave. I should have thought of that before!
I pushed the stack back to him. “And now, Oh Dear,” I said, using his nickname, “what other news do you have?”
“Well,” he said, “from what I can hear when they don’t know I’m listening, Lombar Hisst is making just utterly marvelous progress addicting the Grand Council members. All the court physicians have been won over to the need of drugs. A lot of population on them, too. It is just a matter of time. There is just one little hook.”
I became alert.
“You apparently have a man here on Blito-P3, some Fleet officer. On some mission. Apparently he has been sending reports through to Captain Tars Roke and the Grand Council has faith in both Roke and this officer. Lombar had the reports traced and they’re in some kind of a monthly platen code so he knows that they can’t be counterfeited.”
Ah, well. No one is likely to get very far ahead of Lombar.
“Goodness, but Lombar hates this officer here! Absolutely goes into fits. So just before I got on the Blixo to come, I got pulled into Lombar’s office. He’s very frightening.”
Indeed, he was, with his yanking on lapels and his stinger.
“And he said he’d found out you had a courier line to Voltar. I think he has spies on every ship. And he gave me a message.”
Ho, ho! A message from the Chief himself!
“He said he was glad to help in sending the whore and Dr. Crobe like you requested. I think he’d do anything to mess up this officer here. Is she a whore, Officer Gris? She seems awfully nice. I talked with her on the voyage. She taught me to tie my tie properly, see?”
“Get on with the message!” I told this rattlebrain.
“Where was I? Oh, yes. And he said they were really counting on you. If this officer he hates so gets the planet on its ear, and especially if he upsets its control elite in any way, things could get very grim.” He was trying to remember the rest of it, twisting his face and frowning.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “If you talked to that woman on the voyage, what did you tell her?”
He went into instant shock. “Nothing. Nothing, Officer Gris. She sort of tried to pump me but I said I was just a messenger and knew nothing. Just carried some papers. And she didn’t pay any attention after that. She was in her cabin nearly the whole voyage. I think she was studying a language because I could hear the machine going.”
“You sure?” I said.
“Oh, goodness gracious, yes, Officer Gris. Lombar Hisst said he would murder me if I told anybody but you. But wait, that isn’t all the message. Lombar said he was counting on you utterly to keep this officer slowed down. The opium and speed and heroin have to keep coming in. And no Rockecenter organization is to be disturbed in any way. Lombar is certain the supply line would collapse if IG Barben collapsed. But he said to tell you there was good news. There is a plan afoot—he didn’t say what it was—but he was certain that some time in the future he would be able to give you a go-ahead and you could safely kill the man.”
I was certainly glad to hear that! Then I had a disturbing thought. Krak had talked with him. “Did she put a helmet on your head?”
“The woman? No. Just before we took off from Voltar the whole ship was searched by Apparatus guards. They confiscated almost all our baggage. They took everything she had with her except one change of clothes and a language machine and tapes. So where would she get a helmet? Who is she?”
“The girlfriend of the man you carried the message to kill,” I said. I couldn’t resist it.
Oh Dear fainted dead away!
I put the magic-mail postcards in his pocket, allowing his mother to live until the next courier run.
I had the guards drag him and his papers out with orders to throw him in a detention cell until the Blixo left.
At my signal they brought in Crobe. The good and learned doctor was a mess. Always dirty, he was not improved a bit from six weeks in a spaceship cabin.
“Are you the (bleepard) that got me ordered here?” he said.
“Well, you’re out of Spiteos,” I replied. “You’re on a beautiful humanoid planet that knows absolutely nothing about cellology or putting tentacles on babies.”
“They confiscated everything I brought!” he said. “I haven’t even got an electric knife!”
“We have lots of electric knives and over five billion people who have never seen a man with two heads where his feet ought to be.”
That interested him, as I knew it would. Then a suspicion crossed my mind. “Were you given orders to study a language? And did you study it?”
“Oh, yes. But languages are a waste of time. Who wants to talk to people when you can do interesting things to them?”
“Tell me ‘Good morning’ in English.”
“Goot mordag.”
Oh, Gods. “Ask me how I am in English.”
“You iss a doggle name George,” he said.
(Bleep)! Stupid (bleepard). He had loafed the whole voyage! I couldn’t trust him even out of this hangar!
“Dr. Crobe,” I said, “I am going to put you in a room and I am going to keep you there until you have mastered a planetary language.”
“What?”
“Just that. And if you really want to get around and enjoy the scenery and begin fruitful work, you’ll take the language machine they gave you and put that nose of yours right into it. And when you can talk to the natives, I will have interesting employment for you and not until.”
It failed to bring the overjoyed response I had expected. He just stood there and glared.
There was a chance that he thought of Earth as just a barbaric and primitive place without a scrap of culture. And this is not true. They have the subjects of psychology and psychiatry and these are marvelous and wonderful things.
I usually carried a couple of paperback texts for consultation when I came up against a knotty problem. I reached into the pocket of my tunic and brought them out. One was Psychology Rampant. The other was To the Depths with Psychiatry. These would certainly prove to him that there was benefit in learning English. I handed them over.
“Read these,” I said, “and you will see how worthwhile English is!”
He took them. He leafed through them. He saw a drawing of a brain and his eyes lit up.
I beckoned to the guard captain and told him to put Crobe in one of the better cells and not let him go until I gave the word.
When the time came, I would let him out and turn him loose on Heller. After all, Heller had wanted a cellologist! I smiled.
Success so far in handling things. One of the troops had even saluted once.
I told the guard captain to bring the female over from the ship.
PART THIRTY-FIVE
Chapter 8
Lulled by months of not seeing her, I had completely forgotten the impact of the presence of the Countess Krak. You knew she was there.
She was wearing a spacer’s greatcoat with the collar turned up. She was wearing spaceboots. Her blond gold hair was in braids around her head like a crown.
She looked at me with steady gray blue eyes and said, “Is Jettero all right?”
Hastily, I gathered my wits. This was going to be touch and
go. “Oh, yes!” I got out.
“Nothing has hurt him?” she said.
Now I had my chance. I could win this only if I played it perfectly. I put my hand on my stomach. “No!” I said quickly. “Somehow I don’t feel very well. It must be something I had for lunch.”
Aha! It worked! She smiled faintly. She thought her hypnotic implant of me was still in place, the (bleepch). She put down the small bag she was carrying.
Now to get a clue about the forgeries. I pointed at her grip. “I see you’re not carrying much baggage. I hear the ship was searched.”
She sighed. “Yes. Snelz put my trunk aboard and they took it. All that fuss about just a few training items. They must have missed them and they read me some long screed about it being unlawful to disclose you were an extraterrestrial. They’re very unreasonable people. I’m not in the military. But that isn’t the problem. They took all the beautiful clothes Jettero gave me. I don’t have anything nice to meet him in. I can’t let him see me like this! But then, you’ll help me get some, won’t you, Soltan.”
“Of course,” I said. My attention was on those Royal forgeries I had given her. “Anything else of value in that trunk?”
“No.”
“I mean the Royal documents . . . you know. . . .”
“Oh, don’t worry, Soltan. They’re safe.”
Aha. She must have been wearing them on her body. I would get around to that during the operation. I said, “You haven’t told anyone about them, have you?”
“Oh, indeed no,” she said reproachfully. “I gave you my word. I haven’t even told Jettero about his Royal appointment or the promise to sign my pardon. You don’t think I’d break my word, do you?”
“Of course not,” I said soothingly. I felt more in control of the situation now. “But, come. You are anxious to go where Jet is. We have to prepare you quickly. Come along.”
I grabbed the unmarked box of bugs, my hat and coat, and went to the door, beckoning.
She picked up her small grip and followed me up the tunnel.
We stopped at the Costume Department. The photographer was there, waiting. I handed him the identoplated order for passport, tickets and travel money and he handed them over.
The Countess Krak had started going down the racks of clothes. The photographer got her attention and asked her to step over to a white wall.
She didn’t divine what he was up to right away as the camera he held probably didn’t look like any camera she had ever seen before. When he held it up to his face, she suddenly understood.
“Oh, no! Not a picture!” she cried. “I’m such a mess!”
Too late. He already had it. He rushed away.
I grabbed a dress off the rack. It was blue with big white flowers.
“What’s that?” she said in a kind of horror.
“Native dress,” I said. “You have to look like a native. Remember the Space Code they read you.”
She looked at the dress in amazement. “You mean these natives don’t know any more about dressing than this?”
I masked any glee I might feel. I pointed at a change booth. “Quickly, quickly. People are waiting. Heller is half a day’s flight from here and we’ve got to get you on your way.”
Reluctantly, she went into the booth and shed her greatcoat.
I found a dingy-looking woman’s hooded cloak. It was a sort of spotty brown. I found a veil. I couldn’t find any shoes or stockings. She was wearing spaceboots. So let her wear spaceboots.
She came out wearing the dress. She was about five foot, nine and a half inches tall and the dress was for a smaller woman. Her opinion of it was plain in her expression.
I shoved the cloak at her. “This will cover it,” I said.
She found a couple small holes in it. She looked at me with a rather calculating eye. It made me nervous.
“The sooner you put this on, the sooner you’re away,” I said.
She put it on. I handed her the veil. She didn’t know what to do with it so I showed her on my own face. “All women go veiled,” I told her. “It’s a religious custom.”
“Are you sure we’re on the right planet?” she said. But she put it on.
I got into my own bearskin coat and karakul hat, picked up the box of bugs, the things she had taken off and her grip, and with some persuasion, got her outside and into the taxi.
Now came the tricky part. I closed the partition so the driver couldn’t hear. “You have to be very careful on this world,” I said. “They are absolutely crazy on the subject of identification. And if you have any scars or marks of any kind on your body, they grab you at once. So all such things have to be removed.”
The taxi was rolling through a very dark night but I could feel her eyes on me.
“Oh, Soltan,” she said, disbelieving.
I turned on the overhead light. “No, look. See that scar on the back of your hand? A dead giveaway.”
“That’s just a little claw mark from a lepertige. You can hardly see it.”
“And look at that wrist! Electric cuffs, weren’t they?”
“Oh, Soltan. You’d need a vivid imagination just to make them out.”
“All right,” I said. “But how about that hideous scar over your right eyebrow?”
“You mean that tiny little scratch?” She fingered it. “But the eyebrow covers it.”
“Well,” I said, “you’re just used to seeing it.” And then I got very cunning. “You think Heller wants to have to look at that huge blemish the rest of his life?”
She was thoughtful. Then she said, “I see what you mean. But you’re not putting me under gas, Soltan.”
“Listen, Countess,” I said. “It is my duty to protect you. Heller would have my head if I let you wander out only to get picked up because of identifying marks.”
I must have sounded convincing—possibly because it was true that Heller would kill me with slow torture if I let anything happen to her. She grew more thoughtful.
It was time to dive straight into Strategy Plan A. “I don’t blame you for being wary,” I said. “The world, any world, is full of wolves. But I am a slave of duty. I will tell you what I will do. I happen to have hypnohelmets here. I’ll let you put both me and the cellologist under one first and I’ll give you a wrist recorder to wear during the operation. How’s that?”
Just as I suspected, it caught her fancy. Above the veil, a gleam was very visible in those gray blue eyes. “All right,” she said.
I almost hugged myself with glee. It had worked! It had worked! I had to turn my face away so she would not see me suppressing triumph. I was tricking the formidable Countess Krak. And getting away with it!
PART THIRTY-FIVE
Chapter 9
It was nearing 9:00 PM and there were very few around at the hospital.
I steered the Countess Krak through the lobby and got her into an interview room.
Dr. Prahd Bittlestiffender had been on the lookout and followed.
She sat down in a chair. She obviously didn’t like the veil and took it off. She threw back the hood.
Young Dr. Prahd gangled into the room.
He stopped.
He stared.
In Voltarian, I said to her, “This is your doctor. He is one of the most competent cellologists Voltar ever produced. Doctor, this is Miss X. She just came in on the Blixo and, as usual, has to have her identifying scars removed.”
Prahd, the silly ape, didn’t take the cue at all. He was just standing there, staring at her with his mouth open!
I was operating smoothly now, myself. I said to her, “We’ll go out now to the warehouse and get a hypnohelmet. So please excuse us.”
I kicked him out of his trance, got him into the hall and closed the door. Carrying her bag and the bug box, I herded him back to the privacy of his office.
I snarled, “What the Hells are you so (bleeped) stunned about?”
“That lady,” he said, eyes wide.
“That ‘lady,’” I told hi
m acidly, “is a very wanted criminal!”
“WHAT? That beautiful woman? I can’t believe it. She must be one of the greatest beauties of Voltar! I’ve only seen one other that could compare with her. And that was Hightee Heller, the Homeview star!”
I pushed him into his chair so I could tower over him. “Listen,” I snarled. “That woman you are going into orbit about was once condemned to death and is today a nonperson. She has killed four men to my personal knowledge. Three of them for just making an innocent pass at her. So don’t get any romantic ideas about that ‘lady’! She is being sent in to do another job. A murder.”
He was staring at me round-eyed, his straw hair standing up in all directions. I pressed my advantage. “We have to con her to protect ourselves,” I continued. “You’re going to remove her scars all right. But you’re also going to put these audio and visual bugs in her skull just like you did with Heller. There’s a scar just above her right eye that will do just fine. So you’re going to put her under gas right now and do the job. She’s not to know about the bugs.”
“But she’ll kill us if she finds out!” he said.
“Precisely!” I snapped. “But I’ve got that figured out. She has an inflated idea of herself as a hypnotist. I am going to propose to her that she put a hypnohelmet on each of us—”
“WHAT?”
“Be calm, be calm,” I soothed him. “I’ve fixed a helmet so it doesn’t work. You simply pretend you are under hypnosis. So will I. And we’ll put a wrist recorder on her. Then she’ll go tamely through with it. I’m just protecting you, that’s all. So run over to the warehouse and get a couple of those hypnohelmets I sent over and I’ll see you back in the interview room.”
He took the box with the two bug devices and put it in his pocket. He left.
Rapidly, I opened her grip. I went through it very thoroughly. Only a few toilet articles and a little makeup. The bulk of the space was taken up with the language machine and some Earth texts. I carefully investigated the lining. Nothing.
The space greatcoat and the coveralls she had been wearing and which I had brought along produced no better result. Originally, when I gave them to her, she had strapped the “proclamations” against her body. And that’s exactly where they must be now. I couldn’t imagine even an Apparatus guard adventuring a skin search on her: she would kill him! And had they found them, they would have checked them against the Palace City log, found they were forgeries and she now would be a very executed Countess Krak, instead of a live one here on Earth.
Mission Earth Volume 4: An Alien Affair Page 27