I stepped in front of him. “I’ve been waiting for you,” I said.
He almost brushed me aside.
“What?” I said. “No completed jobs to be stamped?”
Heller had a few but it didn’t take me very long to stamp them. Lombar was still in the ship. What could be keeping them? Heller might go inside and see the open deckplate. I had forgotten to close it! He could stumble right into them! And Lombar would tear me to pieces!
“Think hard,” I said quickly. “Isn’t there anything you really want for the ship? You know, we have a vastly increased allocation. I was supposed to tell you,” I lied in the hope of gaining time, “that you had to use some of it up. It won’t look good on the books unspent.”
Fleet people evidently don’t think that way. They have some weird idea of saving the government money and spending only on essentials. Dumb! If you don’t spend an allocation, it lapses!
Heller was looking at me oddly. Then he said, “Well, we haven’t ordered any flowers for the going away party.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “Make out an order for flowers.”
He looked at me very strangely. He seemed to be having trouble keeping his mouth straight. But he took out a sheaf of blank order forms, put them on a board that usually hangs on his belt, snapped a pen into his fingers and wrote a formal order for flowers. I added two or three types and a wreath and a good-luck-on-the-voyage necklace for the ship, the kind they put on ships carrying celebrities. Then that was all I could think of. I stamped it with my identoplate.
What in Hells was detaining Lombar?
“Now surely,” I said, “there is something else we don’t have.”
He was having trouble with his mouth. Sore tooth? It kept quivering. “Well, we don’t have any yellow, pink and purple bubblebrew for the send-off.”
“Oh, good,” I said. I had never heard of yellow or purple bubblebrew. But he wrote it all down quite solemnly. I stamped it.
Where in HELLS was Lombar?
As Heller was about to move toward the ship, I blocked him again. “Surely there is something else!”
He looked at me. He was having real trouble with his mouth. He must have bruised it leaping about the ship the way he does. “Well, we haven’t ordered a tup party, complete with polka-dot cakes and blue-skinned dancing girls for the contractors and their crews.”
“Good. Good. Write it up.”
So he wrote that up and I stamped it.
NO LOMBAR!
“Oh, we must get busy, I can see,” I said. “There certainly must be some other items.”
Heller seemed to be having trouble with his throat. But he finally said, “Well, we can’t leave out all the hangar crews and hangar guards. They’d be upset if we favored the contractors and forgot them. Let’s see,” and he seemed to consider it. “How about a going away party for them with five separate dance bands, green mountain dancing bears, flitter from the roof and fireworks?”
“Oh, good, good, write that up!”
So he wrote up the order for a huge tup party. I stamped it.
MY GODS, WHERE THE HELLS WAS LOMBAR!
“Surely, surely,” I said, “you haven’t covered everything.”
He was having an awful time swallowing. He finally said, “We haven’t ordered new dress uniforms for Snelz’s platoon.”
“Oh, wonderful. Write that up!”
So he wrote that all up and even added to it new boots, new bedding for all of them and a new baton for Snelz. I stamped it.
Lombar, for the love of all the Gods in heavens, get out of that ship!
“Now surely,” I said, “we have not thought of everyone.”
“Oh, so we haven’t,” he said. “A new uniform, a new pair of boots for your driver Ske. No, we’ll make it two new uniforms and two new pairs of boots and a dress uniform for special occasions.”
He wrote it up and I stamped it as slowly as I could.
My eyes, flicking constantly to the air lock, had seen no sign of Lombar. Oh, my Gods, how long can I keep this up?
“Jettero,” I said pleadingly, “there must be some additional item we have forgotten.”
He thought hard. But he did seem to be having trouble breathing. His chest kept jiggling and his mouth was very straight.
“Well,” he said at last. “You won’t need anything as you’re going along. Ah, I have it! A whole new wardrobe for the Countess Krak!”
He wrote and he wrote. Boots, dresses, jumpers, a tiara, chank-pops, on and on. Finally he was done. I stamped it.
In agony I was looking at the air lock. No Lombar.
And then, accidentally, my eye shifted to another direction. The exterminator truck? It was GONE!
Oh, (bleep) him, Lombar and that bunch of hoods with him had slipped out of that ship and driven off! The coast was clear and probably had been for some time! I had been doing all this stalling totally in vain! They must have left the ship right on my heels! Maybe while I was changing in the truck!
“That’s all for now,” I said quickly.
Heller took all the stamped sheets, separated the copies. He handed the former over to an order clerk and the latter to me.
“Thank you very much, Soltan,” he said. “That was very thoughtful of you. I thought you were just playing a joke at first and that I was playing a joke on you back. But halfway through, I began to see that you meant it. I’m sorry I was laughing at you. I hope they can find that yellow and purple bubblebrew. So far as I know, it doesn’t exist. And neither do the solid gold-heeled lepertige leather thigh boots I put down for the Countess. But we’ll let the purchasers worry about that. I thought we were supposed to leave very quietly. But obviously, that isn’t required. That sure will be some going away party! So thanks again.”
He clickety-clacked away on his hull shoes and was shortly swarming up a rope to complete testing the plates. I watched him sourly. These Fleet guys, I had heard, did play jokes with purchase orders: sky blue carbon black, cans of vacuum, a pound of photons, a perimeter of assorted space particles.
And then I thought of my revenge. If and when he got as far as demonstrating that element conversion equipment, he was in for some real humiliation. Serve him right!
I went back to my airbus. I told my driver to go up someplace and hover. I needed some peace and quiet.
It wasn’t until a half-hour later that I suddenly realized how the Finance Office would treat some of those orders. They would declare them “frivolous” and “exterior to existing allocations.” And they would not do that until the orders had actually been placed and the goods delivered. You could spend millions of government money unless it was “frivolous.”
In a sudden panic, I started tallying up the probable cost of these bills! The further I tallied, the more frantic I became.
If these orders were disallowed, they could be debited against the account of the stamping officer!
Some, like uniforms, might get okayed but the rest came to about eight hundred and fifty credits! Maybe more!
If I overdrew my account I would probably be court-martialed, even cashiered!
Ske said, “What’s the matter with you? You look like you’re having a convulsion!”
Finally, I managed to tell him. “Drive to the Finance Office. I’ve got to place nine hundred credits into my year’s advanced pay account and quick!”
I nearly would be broke again!
Slumped, I gloomed over my fate as we rode along.
And then I sat up straight with a new horror. With all those parties, fireworks and wreaths on the ship, Lombar was going to tear my guts out for violating the secrecy of the mission!
I suddenly yelled, “(Bleep) Heller. (Bleep) him and all his kind!”
It didn’t help to hear Ske laughing. He wouldn’t laugh if he really knew how bad it was.
It had begun as such a beautiful day.
PART TEN
Chapter 9
I had spent the remainder of the day before tending to this and th
at and then had spent the night rolling around in a growing state of apprehension. Today I was somehow going to have to lure Heller to that miniature hospital and get him operated on. My main worry was the Countess Krak. If she suspected I had done something to Heller, Spiteos or no Spiteos, she would find ways to kill me. When I finally got to sleep, it was only to have a nightmare about her mistaking me for the yellow-man I had seen her stamp to pulp. In it, I kept trying to tell her that the only reason I was having a nightmare was because she had a role reversal, prompted by an Electra complex of father fixation, but she just kept on stamping. I woke up streaming sweat and for a few moments had been sure it was my blood kicked out of me. I didn’t go back to sleep!
In the morning, I approached Tug One after sunrise when I was sure Krak had gone. The best tricks I could think of held firmly in my mind, I walked aboard, smiling a smile I did not feel. Heller was already up, sitting in the fancy salon, polishing off some notes. He was dressed in a white, flare-collared, work cover suit of some sparkly material. These Fleet guys certainly can put on airs. I hoped it got bloodstained before the day was out!
“You’ll have to postpone any other work you have for today,” I said. “You have a physical readiness appointment.”
He laughed. “I think I’m ready. I’m in pretty good shape, actually. I was about to run around the hangar for a workout before the crews came this morning.”
“May I sit down?” I said and did. “Jettero, you don’t understand espionage. That’s why I am here to guide you. In the place where we are going, they do ALL their police records with identifying marks. If you have any identifying marks, you can be spotted, just like that!” And I snapped my fingers.
He shook his head. “I don’t have any.”
“Hah!” I said. I reached over and grabbed the glistening white cloth and pulled it aside to bare his shoulder. I secretly hoped the cloth would tear. “What do you call that?” And I pointed to where Lombar’s paralysis dagger had left a small white scar. “Do you see?” I let go and the jumper sprang back in place. I looked at his face searchingly. For a combat engineer who had been through all the battles and adventures he had, he certainly had few marks on him.
Then I found one. Just at the outer edge of his right eyebrow there was a tiny scar. The very thing! Through it one could enter between the temple and the over-eye bone.
“So,” I said, triumphantly, “there’s two already.” And I pointed to the eyebrow scar.
“Oh, that,” he laughed. “You won’t believe this but I was with a campaign on a primitive planet once. I had to get into a stockaded village. And I got hit with a stone-headed arrow! Honestly. A bow and arrow! The on-board doctor who fixed it laughed and laughed over it. I was standing there with a blastgun ready to shoot and got hit with an arrow! Hilarious. Had the whole squadron laughing. It’s nothing.”
“It’s an identifying mark,” I said impressively. “Where we’re going, they would see that and recognize at once you were from Voltar. Pick you up like that!” And I snapped my fingers to emphasize it.
Heller exploded with laughter. “We don’t use bows and arrows on Voltar! Look around, Soltan. You see any?” He thought it was screamingly funny. He laughed and laughed. I hoped he choked.
I could see I was getting nowhere on that course, so I went into my second argument. I had spent hours on this project, all aspects of how to lure him into an operation. “Well, that may or may not be,” I said a bit sternly. “But it doesn’t get around Regulation 534279765 Part A, Paragraph one! It distinctly states that no one with identifying marks may be landed on Earth! So there!”
He had stopped laughing. “You have the regulations here to show me, of course.”
Well, I couldn’t do that. I had just made it up. But I can think pretty fast. “You know of Book of Space Codes Number a-36-544 M Section B, prohibiting landing and disclosure of extraterrestrial identity.”
He knew of that, yes.
“The identifying marks regulation I just gave you is a secret court interpretation of it. We’re bound by it, you know.”
Heller shook his head. “I confess I have not seen it. And if that interpretation is Apparatus, I’m Fleet. I’m not bound by it.”
It was plain I was not progressing. But the psychology of Blito-P3 had not yet been brought into play. This is the real standby of my personal tradecraft. Nobody ever knew, until these disclosures here, that I owed my success to it.
A child, it says, when denied the things it wants, often goes into what is called a tantrum, which is one of their scientific terms. Adults, faced with it, usually recoil and surrender. I went into Stage One of a tantrum.
“You,” I pouted, “are just trying to make my job difficult. You are an old meany.” It is a magic psychological term, an incantation phrase. Right away, I could see it was having an affect. Heller looked at me, puzzled.
I went into Stage Two: negation. “If you don’t go with me for your physical readiness appointment, I WILL NOT STAMP ANY MORE COMPLETION ORDERS FOR YOU!” I shouted the last in a proper pitch and wail.
It was working. He was peering at me, perplexed.
I went into Stage Three: convulsive denial. I fell on the floor on my back, I writhed. I beat my heels against the floor in a furious tattoo, simulating an epileptiform seizure. It is that which gets them. The secret is that an epileptiform seizure also occurs in death: the adults fear the child is in the last convulsions of dying. I was watching carefully out of the corner of my eye.
It really was working! He took a long sigh—the textbook response—and rolled his eyes up to heavens.
Stage Four is putting a piece of soap in the mouth and frothing and I had the soap all ready. I was also ready to go into Stage Five which is the simulated death rattle.
I didn’t have to!
Heller said, “Oh, for Gods’ sakes, Soltan! You don’t have to put on a phony act! If my not going will get you into trouble with Lombar Hisst, I’ll come along!”
I had him!
Outside I told the subofficer and guard to stay by the ship. Heller would be gone for the day.
We took off.
Earth psychology works every time! Not as pleasant, of course, as a Bugs Bunny activity. But every bit as effective! Those psychologists and psychiatrists on Earth have it down pat! They can fool the suckers every time! Absolute masters of coldblooded deception and chicanery!
Satisfyingly cruel, too. Just like my plans for today.
PART ELEVEN
Chapter 1
Well, well,” said Heller as we flew in. “Pausch Hills suburbs. An improvement over the operating rooms of Spiteos.”
Ske was taking a low approach to the Widow Tayl’s estate. “Oh, yes, indeed. I knew what I was doing when I persuaded you. You were very wise to come along. Everything will be just lovely. Nothing but the best.” And I pointed out the sign on the gate:
SACRED MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
PRESERVED IN MEMORY
OF MY BELOVED HUSBAND
Too bad, I thought to myself, that we can’t bury you the same way. “A specialist doctor, the top of his profession, will take wonderful care of you.” You crew-corrupting (bleepard). I smiled. We landed. “Well, here we are and out you get.”
Prahd was standing way over outside the miniature hospital door. He had a surgical, aseptic mask on. He was holding a glittering pair of forceps in his hand. The sun flashed on the polished metal as he opened and closed them.
Heller jumped down out of the airbus. He took a deep breath of the fragrant, blossom-laden air and stretched. Then he started across the lawn and past the swimming bath toward Bittlestiffender. I could hardly contain my glee: he had taken the bait; I had him!
Over under the blossoming trees, I had not seen the Widow Tayl. She was standing there in the shadows. She had not moved forward. She was just standing there. Her mouth was half open, her eyes round. She was holding one hand to her breast as though finding it hard to breathe. I thought to myself that she was, unfortunatel
y, really developing a case on me. Adoration fixation, they call it: the inexplicable attraction of the female for a virile and handsome male. I regretted having this effect on women at the moment. I had other business in mind. I hastened to keep up with Heller.
“Dr. Bittlestiffender,” I said. “Here is your . . . patient.” I had almost said “meat.”
I had already briefed young Dr. Prahd Bittlestiffender. But he was a little nervous. Why not? He thought his world would collapse if he failed with this case. He nodded, snap-snipping the instrument in his hand convulsively. He led the way hurriedly inside. Heller took a brief tour around the room. “Well, well. All the latest and the newest.”
“Now, if you will just remove your clothes and lie down on this operating table,” said young Dr. Prahd, “we can get on with it.”
“I hope so,” said Heller. “I’ve got a lot of things to do at the ship. We’re sailing very soon, so . . .”
His ignorance of espionage and security was awful! He’d be telling Bittlestiffender his life history and right name next! I cut him off. “Then the sooner you do what the doctor says, the quicker it will be over.”
Heller kicked off his shoes and peeled. He lay down on the operating table.
“Hm,” said the young Dr. Prahd, “you are certainly extremely well built. And equipped.”
It startled me. I glanced to see if there was amour in this young doctor’s eyes. But there wasn’t. He was just being matter-of-fact professional. And it was true, unfortunately, what he said of Heller. He was a very muscular, well-proportioned athlete and he was very well equipped. I realized Prahd was building patient empathy. Then I realized the compliment had made me a little cross. Other people are well built and equipped, too. Well, not really.
“Doctor,” I said, “I want to call your attention to certain deadly identifying marks. Quite disfiguring. And a total catastrophe in our line of work.”
Prahd was looking and looking. He couldn’t see any. And the dumb (bleepard) was about to say so when I firmly pointed at the tiny white scar Lombar’s paralysis dagger had made. “That,” I said, leaving no room for dispute, “must be taken care of!”