Mission Earth 09 - Villainy Victorious

by Villainy Victorious [lit]

  "My very soul cries out to do him justice. With these two hands I could separate his spine, vertebra by vertebra, and take the utmost pleasure in it. I would love to deliver him even into the hands of this mob and let him be dismembered!"

  Wild cheering began at the back and swept forward in a roar.

  When the hysteria died, Hisst swept on. "Alas, His Majesty lies ill, too ill to be disturbed, and in this time of public crisis, I do not wish for anything but tranquil­lity. I am therefore carrying forward His Majesty's deep­est wish and I am assuming the temporary powers of Dictator of Voltar."

  There was a shock of stillness. The crowd stared. They had never heard of such a post or position.

  But the speech gave no time for discussion. Lombar had never heard of the position either. He had not read the speech beforehand. But suddenly, although he could not imagine what it might embrace, he accepted the post with a surge of unbridled elation. It was the stepping-stone he had been seeking.

  Filled with divine fervor, he read on, "I pledge on my honor to bring peace to Voltar, tranquillity to its peo­ple, and I will stamp out ruthlessly any dissidence or question that will damage the state. I am backed by the sterling and honest officers of the Apparatus and I will gather in the support of every other branch of service, or else!

  "Now, as to the matter of Gris, due to the obstruc­tionism of the Royal prison, other means will have to be used. The danger is that this foul fiend will be released upon the population to work his will again. Fortunately, there is a new tool that can be used. It is called psycho­therapy. It is that which will be employed. And I shall use my new powers to see that it is properly applied. So I promise you that the matter of Gris will be successfully concluded to the satisfaction of everyone."

  The crowd was confused. Then they began to get the idea that psychotherapy must be some kind of torture. They began to cheer.

  Lombar came to the last paragraph of his speech. He waited for a lull and then he boomed it out, "O population of the Confederacy! I promise you that I and all the other officers of the Apparatus, honest, unim­peachable and dedicated, will bring peace and order to the state no matter WHAT we have to do. I thank you!"

  Delight raged. Lombar came down off the platform feet taller than he had climbed up it.

  The two Death Battalions stood there dumbfounded. Their officers had to scream at them to block back the surging crowds so Lombar could get into his tank. The din of cheering for Lombar was deafening. He stood in the turret and waved. His tank took off.

  "My Gods, Madison," he said, "your genius is almost as great as mine. But this post of dictator, won't it have to pass the Grand Council?"

  Madison handed him the G.C. order, all stamped and signed. Only two members had been present but the pages were good pages. They had done what Teenie told them to.

  "A man named Napoleon," said Madison, "moved from dictator to emperor with ease."

  "GODS!" said Lombar, quivering. And for minutes he just stared into space.

  It was not until they were flying across the Great Desert that Lombar spoke again. "You know, this opens the door to total cooperation by the Army and the Fleet. We will be able to handle both Calabar and Earth with ease. You seem to have solved everything. But I do have one question. What is this thing called psychotherapy? Some new long-distance method of execution?"

  "You leave that to me," said Madison.

  Lombar nodded and forgot about it.

  PART EIGHTY

  Chapter 1

  Madison was handling the "psychotherapy."

  He was in the observation slot back of the wall be­hind the eightieth-floor townhouse auditorium. He was grinning. This had to work, and when it did he would have his trial. And with the Gris trial, he would have Heller.

  The editorials in the papers had been a very mixed lot on the subject of Lombar's speech, none of them less stunned than Madison's own staff. On his return his reporters and crew had said, "We made a dictator, bango, just like that! But what's a 'dictator,' Chief?" Some of the papers were of the opinion that a "dictator" was one who spoke into a dictating machine. Others, since the word had been translated directly over into literal Voltarian, said that it was a more forceful kind of spokesman and was a natural outgrowth from that earlier title. But the majority seemed to gather that Lombar had assumed much more embracive powers and, if the Grand Council order had not been showing up on their consoles, they would have had to assume that Lombar had authored some kind of a coup; they were not at all sure what. But none of the papers missed the point that the Apparatus was suddenly the senior force of the state.

  The Apparatus didn't miss it. Their officers, with few exceptions jailbirds, joked to one another about their "unimpeachable reputations" and their "honor." They began to put on airs. Apparatus officers had never dared go into the better hotels and restaurants and clubs, and suddenly it pleased their fancy to show up and bully wait­ers and managers around. Apparatus troops began at once a game of holding arms and walking up streets shov­ing everyone else off the walks. Underpaid and unpaid, they began to find ways of being paid.

  But Madison ignored all that. He was on to bigger game: Heller. His ways of arriving there were entirely PR. Deadly!

  This "psychotherapy" action had begun with his dis­covery of a postcard in the Gris dossier. It said:

  SOLTAN GRIS!

  YOO-HOO, WHEREVER YOU ARE.

  The baby came on schedule and he's beautiful.It's a he.

  Now, I don't want to have to go to your superior officer and make a fuss. It would be much nicer just to climb in bed with you. So when are you going to turn up and do the right thing and marry me?

  Pratia

  PS: Any commanding officer: You can come out and see me about this any time you like. I hope you're handsome. I am very pretty again now that my belly is flat and we can talk it all over. What do you like for

  breakfast? I can be found at Minx Estates, Pausch Hills.

  PPS: It has the softest beds and the loveliest swimming pool and a summerhouse with a bed in it. Smack. Smack.

  Now, Madison had known better than to put his handsome face in that trap. So he had sent the director and one of the circus girls dressed as people of fashion and an actor as Gris's "commanding officer."

  Now, here in the auditorium, a hundred ladies of the "club" were gathered in breathtaking suspense, and Madison's grin widened as he peered through the slot from which he could view them. Although many were middle-aged, they looked in full bloom. They had re­captured some of their lost youth and life, viewed through a marijuana haze and sex, and seemed remark­ably attractive.

  Crobe took the stand. This time they'd kept the LSD away from him, and expecting more if he delivered, he was on his good behavior. The little speaker was in his ear and all he had to do was repeat the script being read over it.

  "Ladies of quality, ladies of fashion, ladies of spark­ling eyes and resurged youth," Crobe began-and it was pretty good even though he was saying it in a very flat voice-"I know how concerned you have been about the state's reluctance to try the insane lunatic Gris. As you doubtless read or saw on Homeview, Lombar Hisst, Dic­tator of Voltar, promised that psychotherapy would be attempted in the Gris case.

  "Now the grave danger, ladies, is that Gris will be released upon the public totally insane, that he will con­tinue to slaughter and burn and rampage throughout a helpless population.

  "Hisst, poorly advised, directly ordered me to at­tempt a solution through psychotherapy. It was reasoned that if the foul fiend could be made sane, it would then be safe to turn him loose.

  "I demurred. I tried to point out that this criminal lunatic Gris was entirely off the Freudian scale. Most of you heard the lecture where I took that up took that up took go on go on.

  "I said to Hisst, 'The chances of success are so remote they are not worth... calculating.' He ordered me to do it anyway. Then I told him that anyone chosen to do this thing might very well be facing certain death. But he said, 'What
is one woman more or less? Find a volunteer and make her do it!"'

  "The brute!" ran the whisper around the room.

  "Now, as you know you know you know quit repeat­ing, according to Freud, sex is the basis of everything. If the true sexual basis of a criminal could be awakened, he would reform and become sane. That is proven scientific fact like all psychiatry.

  "So what will be attempted is to bring light into the life of Gris in the hope that it will reform him, bring him back to sanity and remove him as a threat from our society."

  The women nodded.

  "But," cried Crobe, "as I told Hisst, the experiment, while noble, has two drawbacks: one, the chances of this working on somebody totally off the classification scale are almost nonexistent; and two, it is almost certain death for the volunteer. Shout yet we have actually found a volunteer."

  Crobe stood there, since no words were coming into his earphone now. An usher led forward the volunteer.

  It was the Widow Tayl!

  She was dressed in purest white. She looked virginal. Her head was bent forward, her smoothly straight hair fell across her face. She clasped her hands in front of her. She had been directed to perfection, to look like a maiden being brought before the altar in a primitive sac­rifice. She stood before them, eyes cast down.

  "This woman," said Crobe, "in a spirit of purest patriotism, is willing to risk her life in this undertaking. I regard with awe her devotion and fearlessness in serv­icing ... serving the state and people. I give you Pratia Tayl wait for applause."

  The assembled women stared. They felt a surge of awe. Then some began to cry.

  "I am therefore," said Crobe, "appointing a commit­tee under the chairwomanship of Lady Arthrite Stuffy to call upon Lord Turn and insist that he permit the mar­riage and nuptial night of Gris and this woman in the Royal prison."

  The audience gasped.

  Madison grinned.

  Chapter 2

  A very disturbed Lord Turn faced the committee of ladies in his chambers the next morning. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. But he had never been pounded by press in all his life and he was getting cowed. Even his own family was not speaking to him lately, and this mass of determined women he saw before him were, many of them, on remarkably good terms with his family.

  "But Lady Arthrite," he sputtered, "nothing like this has ever happened before. A marriage to take place in my prison? It's unheard of."

  Lady Arthrite fixed him with a gimlet eye. "Lord Turn, we have consulted legal experts. Our family attor­neys tell us that there is no regulation against it! You are NOT covered by the law this time. Any objection by you would be purely personal!"

  Lord Turn digested that. He was a letter-of-the-law man and he knew she spoke the truth. It had suddenly become too personal. Then he grasped at an out. "Mar­riage is a thing to which the man must agree. I doubt very much that Soltan Gris would want to get married!"

  "He must be asked and we must hear if this is the case."

  Lord Turn raised his eyes to the ceiling. There were no regulations up there to be read. He looked back at Lady Arthrite. "Very well. We will go ask Gris."

  Now, the Apparatus is an intelligence service and it has ways and means of getting information. And, this time through a warder's wife, Madison had learned that Soltan Gris had finished writing his confession.

  Actually, Gris, these days, had put on some weight through lack of exercise, and food eaten regularly. Just now he was sitting in the tower cell wondering what to do with his time.

  He had delivered the massive confession. For a cou­ple of days thereafter he had worried a bit, thinking he would now be executed. Then he began to realize that judges take a long time to read things and maybe he had a few more breaths of life left to breathe.

  The orders that he stay away from the window did not have to be repeated to him: he knew in his bones that Lombar Hisst would move the planet to get at him. He had heard some crowd shouting something or other out­side the prison on some occasions but he had not dared go to the window to look and he could not understand what they were saying: they were too distant. No infor­mation had come to him. He knew nothing whatever about the press campaign against him.

  He was somewhat puzzled therefore to hear many footsteps coming up the tower stairs and a buzz of voices. Female voices? How strange!

  There was a jangle of opening plates and then the groan of his iron door.

  A guard came in and pointed a weapon at him.

  The room was suddenly full of women!

  Gris's wits promptly went into a spin.

  He recognized none of them.

  Their gaze upon him was hostile in the extreme.

  Panic gripped him and there was no place to run.

  A hooded figure, very slight of build, advanced toward him. It came very close.

  He felt a note being pushed into his hand.

  Almost hysterical, he glanced down at the note. It said:

  If you don't say yes I will tell them about the baby and they will tear you limb from limb.

  The figure before him then lifted a hand and took hold of the top of her hood and pulled it off.

  Gris went into petrified shock.

  IT WAS PRATIA TAYL!

  "For the good of the state," she said, carefully coached, "I have volunteered to marry you." And, out of sight of the others she jabbed a finger at the note.

  Gris, very close to fainting, could not speak.

  Lord Turn, at the back of the group, snarled, "Well, answer her! Speak up so we can get about our business!"

  "Say yes," hissed the Widow Tayl.

  Gris took a look at her slitted, determined eyes. He looked at the hostile faces of the other women.

  It suddenly occurred to him that he could buy a lit­tle more life. He could postpone his execution simply by setting a forward date, a month away, for this marriage.

  "YES!" he shouted.

  Lord Turn was amazed.

  Hope suddenly lit the faces of the women.

  "Good," said the Widow Tayl, "we will be married right here this afternoon. Be ready."

  Gris tried to open his mouth to speak.

  The cell was empty and the door clanged shut.

  Chapter 3

  Madison, of course, had the headlines set and ready to go. By noon, papers were all over the streets with vari­ants of the headline:

  SACRIFICIAL BRIDE

  TO REFORM GRIS

  Of course, there were statements by Crobe to the effect that it was a nearly impossible feat. He could not possibly guarantee any success due to the fact that Gris "had come to him too late"-the usual psychiatric hedge they used on Earth.

  But what attracted public attention, as Madison knew it would, was the probable fate of a beautiful woman. Thousands upon thousands of people began to gather on the lower slopes of the Royal prison. Many were weep­ing, none had any hope, all thought it was a cruel thing to do and all thought that the nobility of Pratia Tayl was beyond any possible estimation.

  Madison didn't even need his own camera crew. Hbmeview had covered the deputation going in and com­ing out and it was down there now in the afternoon sun­light, putting on the air live this vast throng of gathering people, getting close-ups of faces, getting opinions. He had hardly had to tell the manager of Homeview what to do at all.

  For Madison had another mission of his own. With Apparatus-provided credentials and in the uniform of a General Services officer, he was going to act as the "bridegroom's friend," a necessary personnel of the cere­mony.

  The guards searched him for weapons and poison and promised him that they would be watching through the slot with a gun on him if he so much as made a ges­ture at Gris. And they let him in.

  Gris was lying on his bunk in a state of collapse. He had failed utterly to buy his month. The thought of being married to the Widow Tayl was only offset by the fact that he would not live very long anyway.

  The bunk was actually an inset ledge in the stone. />
  When a pad was on it, as now, it had only about four feet of clearance to its overhead.

  He saw what he took to be a General Services officer being let in. That didn't necessarily mean Apparatus. He had expected they would send someone to help him get ready, and sure enough the fellow had some boxes under his arm. He was also reassured when he saw a gun barrel trained through the cell view-slot. So he lay there watching.

  Then suddenly the features under the cap began to register.

  In horrible shock he shot upright!

  He hit his head!

  It didn't knock him out. It sent his wits spinning. He thought he was at 42 Mess Street, New York City. No, he must be on the yacht Golden Sunset.

  Madison? It was MADISON!

  "Oh, no," said Gris. "No, no, no!"

  Madison found a stool and sat down beside the bunk. "Well, Smith," he said in English, "I mean Gris. I certainly hate to see an associate of Mr. Bury's in trou­ble. Don't be concerned. I am here to help you out."

  Gris went into terror. "Oh, please, dear Gods, Madi­son. Don't act as my PR!"

  "Of course not," said Madison. "I am your friend. I will do everything I can to see you come out of this in great shape."

  "Oh, no, no, please. Please Madison, don't help me."

  "Oh, nonsense, Gris. That is what friends are for. Now listen to me carefully. You are going to get out of this with flying colors."

  "You mean... you mean I have a chance of getting off?"

  "Oh, more than a chance, Smith. There are people working day and night to keep you from being executed. It's the very last thing your friends want!"

  "I have friends?"

  "Why, of course you have! You have no idea how much has been done for you already. We're going to get you brought to trial."

  "WHAT?"

  "Absolutely. Not only that, it will be a fair trial. You don't think the Widow Tayl is desirous of becoming a double widow, do you? Why, no. She's got money by the ton and she will hire the very best attorneys. I can assure you that you have a very long and very interesting life ahead of you."