He was a cocky, self-confident type, a little runt named Flip, product of Wiggo, one of the Voltar planets. Nobody had ever persuaded him to comb his hair Earth style: it stood up in two spirals, like twin antennae.
“Alarm system don’t work?” he said.
I sat him down. I handed him the hypnohelmet and the box it came in. “There is a grave emergency,” I said. “These just came in on the Blixo. They work on everybody.”
He looked the hypnohelmet over. Count on a technician. They never look on the outside of anything. He instantly began to look inside and open up the guts. Then he paused. “If they work, what am I doing fixing it?”
“You don’t understand,” I said patiently. “I’ve got sixteen of these. I want them fixed so that they only work when I want them to work. I want them fixed so that on some people, they appear to be working when they are not working at all.”
He probed around in it. “Well, that’s easy. The light on the front that shows the operator it is working isn’t part of the main circuit. It can go on independently. So we just put a switch on it and it goes on but the main circuit doesn’t.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “I want the operator to turn the helmet on and think that it is working but on some people it works and some it doesn’t. Now, I thought if you could put some kind of a secret switch inside the helmet that only the one it is put on can turn off, it would solve the problem.”
“Oh, you mean the guy inside the helmet should be able to turn it off while the operator thinks it is still on. Right?”
“Right. Now, I was thinking that very few people can wiggle their ears. I can wiggle my ears. It is a talent I have. So if the operator put a helmet on me and I wiggled my ears—let’s say three times—the helmet would be off when the operator thought it was still on.”
“I can’t wiggle my ears,” said Flip.
“Precisely,” I said. “So the helmet would work on you but, as I can wiggle my ears, it would not work on me.”
“Can’t be done,” he said. “Not with the state of the art. There are no ear-wiggling switches.”
“Not even a tip of an ear?” I pleaded.
He saw I was pretty desperate. He thought. Then he looked at the little manual I had been reading. “Huh,” he snorted disparagingly, “a scaled-down operator’s manual. Worthless.” He reached down to the bottom of the carton and he brought out a huge, thick manual, enough to break a man’s arm: Design, Theory, Maintenance and Repair Manual for Technicians.
In a moment he was absorbed in huge, spread-out schematics. “Aha!” said Flip. “A multimanifold, bypass-input, shunt circuit!” He put a finger on it impressively. “Right there!”
I sat hoping.
He looked into the helmet. He unfastened a small cover and looked in. “These are Yippee-Zip Manufacturing Company components. You’re lucky. They’re standard in computers. We got their stuff by the ton.”
“You can do something?” I said breathlessly.
“If I put a mutual-proximity breaker switch in this circuit right here, and if it is activated, the front light will go on but the helmet will be null and void.”
Although the chart was huge, the part he was pointing at—and the whole setup in there actually—was no bigger than my thumbnail. I said, “But I can’t get the tip of my ear in there! It would be too risky!”
“No, no, no. A mutual-proximity breaker switch is in two parts. They use them on spaceships. When one spaceship gets too close to another spaceship, it trips a switch in the other’s computers and shunts in an avoidance direction.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look, I put Part A of the switch in the helmet circuit. The subject it isn’t supposed to work on wears Part B in his hair. When they come together, Part B interacts with Part A and the helmet, she don’t work but she looks like she is working.” He saw I was befuddled. “I’ll get some,” he said and rushed out.
In about ten minutes he came back up through the tunnel. He had sixteen cartons. They were small but heavy.
“You can’t wear anything too big in your hair,” I protested.
He laughed. He opened one carton. There were two little lead boxes in it, each marked differently. “This one,” said Flip, “goes in the helmet. This one the guy puts in his hair.”
“They’d be noticed!” I protested.
“No, no, no,” he said. “You don’t get it.” He opened up the box for the helmet side. In it, carefully positioned by tiny prongs, was the tiniest speck I have seen in some time. He opened up the other one. Same thing. “Mini-micro circuitry components,” he said.
“But why the heavy lead boxes?” I said. “Are they radioactive?”
“Oh, no, no, no,” said Flip. “If you keep them in the parts store unshielded, they activate other components around them. Computers won’t work that have these in them. The computer field hits one of these in the parts store and all it will register is collision! So they put sets of them in shielded boxes.”
He got right to work. He put the helmet part of the switch into the helmet. It was very delicate work, done with a huge magnifier and a little screw-adjustable set of prongs and snips. Indeed, it never would be detected! It was like working with molecules.
It took him a long time. Finally he had it. “Now, I will show you,” he said.
He put the helmet on a chair. He put one of his innumerable meters under it. He turned it on. The meter read like mad. That helmet was really putting out! I shuddered.
Then he opened the little lead box of Part B and with prongs put the tiny bit on the chair. The meter went dead. The front light of the helmet glowed brightly. He hit the helmet switch several times. On and off went the light but the meter did nothing. Then he put the tiny bit back in its lead box, turned the helmet on and the meter went mad!
I had been thinking very hard. I knew what I would have to do. And I also knew what I would have to do with Flip. The secret must not get out.
“Fix them all!” I said.
Happily he went to work.
I dozed and read some comic books. The day wore on. I saw he was getting down to the last helmet. It was sunset.
My original plan had been, when he was finished, to pretend I wanted the illusion inspected on the mountaintop and then push him through it. But Faht Bey was so touchy these days. A dead technician splattered all over the hangar floor might also excite the appetites of the assassin pilots—they earlier had wanted to kill technicians.
No, I had a better plan by far. I excused myself and went into the bedroom. I closed the door. Out of his sight and hearing, I fished a recorder from the vault. I studied the manual on how to make a hypnostrip.
I made a strip. I said, “When you are finished with the hypnohelmets you will forget everything about these hypnohelmets being in my room. You will forget you changed them. You will think you were called for to repair the alarm system and that while you were here, that is all you did. When I remove the helmet from your head, you will see nothing and feel nothing until I say ‘Thank you.’ You will then ask me if the alarm system is all right. Then you will be awake and normal. You will forget you have heard this recording.”
I went back in where he was working. I had the strip in my pocket.
He finished the last helmet. “All done,” said Flip. He carried the helmets, back in their boxes, to the vault and cleaned everything up.
I brought back the last helmet and one Part B box. “All done but the test,” I said.
“The meter tells you that.”
“I don’t know about meters. Tests should be live. Do you mind?”
“Sure, go ahead,” said Flip. “But if it don’t work, then spaceships will be crashing all over the place. Those things are reliable.”
I opened up the lead Part B box. I took the tiny scrap out and put it in his hair. I put the helmet on his head. I turned on the switch.
He went out like a light! The thing I had put in his hair was a dust speck! The real Pa
rt B was doubled in a lead box in the other room!
I slipped the recorded strip into the helmet slot. It went right through, just like it was supposed to.
I took the helmet off his head. He just sat there with his eyes shut. I took the dust speck out of his hair.
I removed the helmet and lead box from the room. I closed the vault. I came back and laid some of his tools beside the trick floorplate in the secret office where he’d been working.
All was ready. I said, “Thank you.”
He looked at me, his eyes still kind of glazed, and he said, “Is the alarm system all right?”
“I sure appreciate your coming here to fix it,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Flip, looking perfectly normal, “there wasn’t much wrong with it after all. You got to step on that floorplate real hard and twist your foot to set the alarm off in the hangar. Just remember that.”
He gathered up his tools and, humming to himself, left.
I had stolen one of his test meters. I went and got a helmet. I got a real Part B of the switch. I took it out of the lead box. I put it under the helmet. I turned the helmet on.
The meter was DEAD!
Hurray! Oh, was I the right one now!
Shortly I would be in a position to seduce any girl, make my whole staff bow down on sight, maybe even get somebody to rob a bank for me. I could untrain Silva. But above all I could order Utanc to love me and get into my bed!
But there was one more thing to do.
PART TWENTY-FOUR
Chapter 3
I wrote a hasty note. I stamped it so it would look official.
I got out a Colt .45 and made sure it was loaded just in case I ran into Silva—which I surely didn’t intend to do.
With flying and jubilant feet, I raced down the passageway to Faht Bey’s office.
He wasn’t there, I was happy to note. I got on his phone and called the taxi driver. I had trouble finding him but after three calls around town, made it. He was in a bar, gambling. He said he was losing a bit and wanted to get even first. I was very tolerant. He said he’d be along shortly.
Faht Bey’s wife came in, saw me and went out hurriedly.
Faht Bey finally came in. I didn’t want to see him. He didn’t want to see me. I could tell. He sat down. He looked at me.
“Those heroin thefts are continuing,” he said.
“Why tell me?”
“Are you sure you don’t know?” And I could tell from the way he looked at me that he thought I was taking it!
“You better be more respectful,” I said with a steely tone. Oh, would I get him. He was going to be an early candidate on those hypnohelmets.
“We’re pretty broke,” he said. “That hospital is costing the planet! The Lebanese banker is very upset.”
“Why tell me?” I said.
“You’re the Inspector General Overlord,” said Faht.
“Yes, I am. And don’t you forget it,” I said.
“We owe IG Barben for the last shipment of speed,” he said. “The one that went on the Blixo.”
“To Hells with the Blixo,” I said and meant it.
“The Lebanese will have to borrow money from the bank to buy the current poppy crop. Interest is thirty percent.”
Oh, Gods, was he ever a candidate for a hypnohelmet!
“We were solvent until you came,” he said.
Two hypnohelmets a day! I’d show him!
Finally the taxi driver came. It was ten o’clock. I looked around carefully for Silva before I went outside.
“I lost my roll,” the taxi driver said. “Could you lend me a few bucks?”
Angrily, I told him to drive me to the hospital. He was going to get a hypnohelmet, too!
We got to the hospital. I told him to wait and keep his eye open for a swarthy Sicilian.
I went inside. It was deserted except for an old woman doing night duty at the counter. I pushed right on by her. I crashed open the door to Prahd’s bedroom.
Two heads popped up.
“My father!” cried Nurse Bildirjin.
“Has my pay started yet?” said Prahd.
Evidently they had been halfway through something.
They seemed to be under a strain.
“Get up out of that bed!” I ordered. Here were two more candidates for hypnohelmets for sure. No respect. Her father is a fat slob.
They knew menace when they heard it. Nurse Bildirjin got out of bed. She didn’t have much in the way of breasts, being maybe only fifteen. She got into her professional nurse’s uniform. She seemed to be swearing under her breath.
Prahd got up. This time he was smart. He put on his shoes first.
I hauled him into his office. I showed him the official-looking forgery. “Here is an order I just received. It must be complied with instantly.”
It said:
BY ORDERS. You are to be bugged instantly. If you were ever put in one of those cells in the basement or in some grave, we would never be able to find you unless you had a responding bug in your skull. This is secret, official and anybody mentioning it will never get his pay started.
The Powers Above
I took the order back.
I handed him the Part B lead box.
He opened it and squinted to see it. “This is a bug?”
“A mini-micro responder,” I said. “It buzzes back when a searching beam is scattered around.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “One of those.”
“Right. I want it implanted in the top of my skull in such a way nobody will know it is there. That’s the order.”
“And then does my pay start?”
“We’ll see,” I said.
He sort of looked at me strangely. But he yelled for Nurse Bildirjin. She raced up. She was muttering under her breath. “Get the operating room ready,” he said.
She raced away. She was still muttering. We followed her at a more leisurely pace. He had set up the operating room. Lights glared. A table with straps was in the middle of the room.
“Is it for him?” said Nurse Bildirjin.
“Yes,” said Prahd.
She promptly grabbed me by the arm and threw me down on the operating table. I was amazed at her strength.
She got me laid out and began to buckle straps. She encased my feet, she encased my stomach, she put big heavy straps across my chest and arms. Then she took one final strap and fastened it across my throat. It was too tight. I was having trouble breathing.
She was muttering under her breath. Sort of savagely.
“Wait!” I said. The way these two were looking at me, I didn’t want to go unconscious. I might wake up with the lancet sticking out of the wrong place. “No general anesthetic!! Just a local. It’s not much of a job.”
“There is no Novocaine,” said Nurse Bildirjin.
I turned my head. “That’s a bottle with Novocaine written on it right there!”
She picked it up and put it in her pocket. “It’s empty. And there are no pharmacies open at this time of night.”
“That’s true,” said Prahd.
She went over to a drawer and got something. She came back and said, “Open your mouth wide.”
I did, expecting her to look at my teeth. She jammed a huge roll of bandage into it and gave it a final shove.
She got up on my chest with both knees. As she was young and a bit bony, they were quite sharp. She pulled up her skirt, leaving her thighs naked. She braced her elbows and took my face in her hands. The fingernails were quite sharp, too. She held my head as though it was in a vice.
“Go ahead, doc,” she said. “And I hope those tools are dull! Young girls have tender feelings.”
I realized that she had an Electra complex. A fixation on her father. I tried to open my mouth and tell her that I wasn’t her father but the bandage roll was in the way.
Nurse Bildirjin’s knees were digging in so hard I didn’t feel the first slice. I felt the second!
Prahd—I could roll my eyes enough to
see—was using a Zanco electric knife. He had a pan catching some blood. He had opened my scalp! I didn’t need to see to know that! It stung like mad!
Nurse Bildirjin held my head very steady with her fingernails. “Maybe it’s not a good idea to go around interrupting things right in the middle,” she said. “Maybe doing it once was okay but when it happens twice, it starts looking intentional. Young girls have tender feelings!”
Prahd was putting some blood in a test tube and warming up a catalyzer. Things buzzed and metal pans clattered. Burners were hissing.
He came back over. He had a little spade sort of instrument. I couldn’t see.
FLASH! Pain went through me like a javelin. Worse!
He backed up. He had taken a little piece of skull!
He put it in a test tube. He put the test tube in the catalyzer. Burners sizzled. So did my skull!
“Did you ever do it halfway?” said Nurse Bildirjin. “Did you ever do it halfway and then have to stop?”
I couldn’t feel her fingernails. My skull hurt too much.
Prahd now had a drill. He started it up.
YEEOW! The noise of it going into my skull was almost as bad as the living agony! The room spun!
“It was going all so nice,” said Nurse Bildirjin. “Nice and slow and even. Making it last. Oh, it was good!”
Prahd had the drill going sideways. I fainted.
When I came to, Nurse Bildirjin said, “It was the first one for the night. I had been looking forward to it all day. I could feel it clear to the top of my head! And then my father came in!”
I tried to tell her, “Nurse Bildirjin, I am not your father. That is an Electra complex. You have a secret passion for your father and it expresses itself in hate.” But the gag was in my mouth.
Prahd was holding the lead box. “Please verify the object.”
She let my head go for an instant. It was the object. I nodded sufferingly.
He took it in some tweezers and dropped it in a solution. He fished it out. She grabbed my head again. Her knees dug.
YEEOW! YEEOW! YEEOW! He had put it in my skull none too gently.
“You ever get stopped halfway through?” said Nurse Bildirjin. “Just when it is going wonderful?”