My own neck was still out. Even with Bawtch and the forgers dead, the Countess Krak could implicate me. Ah, well. Very shortly, I would have them back for she would be lying there under gas. I might even fold a packet of paper to put in their place. Yes, that was the ploy. I made a paper packet up.
A door slammed somewhere and I realized Prahd must be back. I hurried down to the interview room and arrived just as he was entering. The Countess Krak’s eyes lit up.
He was carrying two cartons and when he put them down she instantly rose and brushed him away. I had carefully replaced the original carton seals, of course—we are experts at that in the Apparatus—and those two cartons looked like they had never been touched since the day they left the manufacturer.
She chose one. She opened it. She looked like somebody about to cut a birthday cake. “Oho!” she said. “All shiny new and the very latest type! See, look! It has a plug-in microphone as well as the recording strip player! Oh, lovely. Such nice colors, too.”
She expertly inserted a power pack and checked the meter. She plugged in the microphone. “Who is first?”
I wasn’t really sure that she wouldn’t also shove a knife into somebody. I gave Prahd a push toward a chair. He nervously perched his lanky body on its edge.
“Do you own this hospital?” she asked him conversationally.
“No, no,” said Prahd, pointing at me. “He does. That is to say, he’s the boss. If you have any complaints . . .”
“Not any yet,” said the Countess Krak, smiling at him sweetly.
She put the helmet on his wheat shock of hair. She turned to me. “If you’ll just wait in the hall, Soltan.” She was juggling the microphone in one hand, the other poised over the switch to turn the helmet on.
I went. But I kept my ear pressed close to the closed door.
“Sleep, sleep, pretty sleep,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
A muffled “Yes.”
“You are about to do an operation. You will do it very expertly. You will not bring about any physical-body distortions or alterations. In other words, you will not monkey with my limbs or glands. Is that clear?”
A muffled “Yes.”
“You will limit your operations to repairing a few scars and blemishes and make it all heal rapidly with no further scars or blemishes and no fancy ideas. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Now,” she continued, “if you or Soltan or any other man approaches me carnally or makes any sexual contact with me while I am under gas, you are to use an electric knife on yourself or them. Understood?”
“Right.”
“And you are not to say anything around me or to me while I am under gas. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Now, if you violate any of this you will feel like atom bombs are exploding in your head. Right?”
“Right.”
“You will now forget what I have said to you and when you wake up you will only remember and believe that I have been asking about your professional qualifications. Agreed?”
“Right.”
A click. She had turned the helmet off. In a minute Prahd came stumbling out the door. I was watching him very closely. I had wanted to be sure that the helmet was made inoperative when the unit I carried came within two miles of it.
He was mopping his face. “Gods,” he whispered. “Atom bombs! I see what you mean!” He tottered down the hall to his operating room.
It was all right. If he’d been hypnotized, he would not have remembered! It was safe.
“Soltan,” a soft voice was calling.
I went in like a meek little schoolboy. I was hiding my grins. She plopped the helmet down on my head. She threw on the switch. Through the visor shield I could see her check the meter and the lights.
She stepped back and held the microphone to her mouth. “Sleep, sleep, pretty sleep. Can you hear me, Soltan?”
“Yes,” I said, making my voice sound groggy.
“Some time ago I told you that if you had any idea of hurting Jettero Heller, you would get sick at your stomach and so forth. Now tell me, Soltan, is that still true?”
“Oh, yes,” I lied.
“And you have not gotten any notion of hurting him or doing him any nasty tricks?”
“Oh, no,” I lied.
“Good. That is still true. Only, added to it is the fact that if you try to do anything bad to me, you will now feel the same way. Understood?”
“Yes,” I said. Oh, Gods, it sure was a good thing this helmet was null on me!
“Now listen carefully. You will help me in every way you can to reach Jettero. You will let me go wherever I want around this hospital and nearby buildings or base. You will let me pick up anything I want. Understood?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Now, also,” she said, “you’ll let me have whatever I take, no matter what it is. You will let me leave with it. And you will find a reasonable reason in yourself for letting me do so. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. You will now forget what I have said. When you awake you will think I have been asking you about the operation. All right?”
“Yes,” I said.
She reached over and clicked the helmet switch and then took it off my head. “Wake up, Soltan.”
Hiding my grin, I said, “Now that you know all about the operation, shall we go to the operating room?”
Oh, smart brains, indeed! What if I had not had that breaker-switch pair installed in the helmets and my skull? All that agony had just paid off! It didn’t compare to the stomachaches I’d had!
PART THIRTY-FIVE
Chapter 10
Prahd sent her into a cubicle beside the operating theater. It was a sort of bathroom-dressing room. He gave her a package—a Zanco disposable sterile operating gown and cap. He gestured toward a slot in the door. “Please drop your clothes through that, including those boots. Then take a shower and get into this. Then enter the operating room through that side door.”
She nodded. She seemed oddly cheerful. But, of course, she was happy to have a bath after six weeks on a freighter. And she was going to see Heller soon, wasn’t she? Still, I was very suspicious of a happy Countess Krak.
Prahd and I entered the operating room itself. He had lights flashing and beakers bubbling and it all looked very businesslike.
“Just as soon as you have her under,” I said, “I’m going to have to do a skin search.”
“WHAT?”
“I have to make sure she is carrying no secret weapons,” I lied. “I will take off my boots. I will be very quiet.”
“You don’t have to come in,” he said. “There’s a viewport, one way, right over in that wall. It looks like a small mirror.”
“Won’t do,” I said. “I can be very quiet. I have to be sure.”
“All right, but do it before I begin work. I don’t want all the germs you carry in here. And I can disinfect afterwards.”
I ignored his insult. I took a wrist recorder out of my pocket. “Tell her she can put this on and start it.”
“I think she would kill us if we took any liberties, Officer Gris. So just be warned that I’ll have my electric knife ready.”
“Hey, you weren’t really hypnotized, were you?”
“No. But if she wakes up and finds she’s been fooled with and your dead body isn’t lying on the floor, she’ll get suspicious that the helmet didn’t work.”
Yes, there was that. But I didn’t exactly like the way he put it.
She came in, in the open-backed operating gown. “That’s the awfullest-smelling soap I think I ever smelled. What a frightful stink!”
“Overstrength germicidal,” said Prahd. “As to the stink, Officer Gris is just leaving. As to the soap, I’ll put a nice-smelling bar in the recovery room and you can shower and wash your hair when you wake up. All right? Good. Now, if you will just sit down on the operating table . . .”
I left. I went around to the one-way window.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying. She was on the table but she was having to master how to operate the wrist recorder and I realized she was unfamiliar with the clumsiness of Earth devices. She finally got it tested and running and hung on her forearm.
She swung her shapely legs up and stretched out. Prahd lowered the gas anesthetic dome. He watched a heart counter and respiration meter. She was out.
He pulled the gown off her and beckoned toward the window.
I went around to the door. I slipped off my boots. More silent than a cat, I entered and stole toward the table.
Gods, she was a beautiful woman! No Greek sculptor had ever had a model like this!
Prahd was standing there with an electric knife. I got busy.
There was nothing strapped to the front of her body. There was nothing around her waist so far as I could observe it. They must be strapped to her back! I moved forward to turn her over. I stopped. Prahd notwithstanding, I was afraid to touch her. I suddenly discovered that terror could be a much heavier emotion than sexual desire. I backed up.
Finding it hard to swallow and shaking a bit, I gestured to Prahd to lift her.
He did, very quietly. I looked under her back from the right side. I went around while he moved her the other way. Nothing. She didn’t have a thing on her!
I tiptoed out of there, feeling somehow that I had escaped with my life.
I went into the change room and searched. Nothing. I examined the clothes she had taken off. Nothing. I looked for false soles in the boots. Just plain black spaceboots.
(BLEEP)!
She was a very clever woman. She not only trained people for the stage, she could also do all kinds of sleight of hand. I would have to watch her very carefully. It would be my neck if I didn’t recover those forgeries. The horrible thought hit me that maybe Bawtch had talked before he died. Or left a note or something! Yes, I had no choice but to recover them. Constant watchfulness was the watchword.
PART THIRTY-FIVE
Chapter 11
Back at the one-way window, I watched the progress of the operation.
She lay in naked repose, oblivious of what was going on.
Prahd was working with rapid expertise. For some reason, he took a lot of measurements with a lot of different scopes and devices, cataloguing them all on a chart. Then he opened a big volume and consulted it. From where I was I could see the page he had: it was headed “Manco.” Well, he was right about that. She was from Manco.
Then he made a signal toward the window, indicating the hall. I met him there. He showed me the book. “This lady is from the aristocracy of Atalanta.”
I noted sourly that it was “lady” again. “Yes,” I said.
“That accounts for it,” he said.
“For what?” I said, irritated.
“The perfection. She’s the product of tens of thousands of years of selective breeding. The aristocracy married nothing but the most beautiful and bright. Do you realize that her thyroid . . .”
Oh, Gods, deliver me from a specialist riding his hobby! “Are you going to get on with this operation or aren’t you?”
“I just wanted you to be aware that you were tampering with the aristocracy,” he said. “It carries the death penalty, you know.”
“I told you!” I grated. “She’s a nonperson! A criminal! There isn’t even any penalty if you killed her.”
He went back in the operating room. I went back to the window. Prahd bent over her ankles and looked very carefully. Then he looked over her wrists. Then he looked at me and nodded. He was convinced.
I knew what he had found. Electric cuffs, wrist and ankle, when worn for weeks, make small burns. And she must have been in them for months during her imprisonment, transportation to Voltar and trial before the Apparatus got her. They had left faint scars.
Prahd got to work. He made his “cell soups” from little clips and drillings. He addressed the scarred eyebrow and, very soon, sterilized the two bugs and implanted them. He covered them over with the bone and skin paste and then put the area under a catalyst light.
He then got busy on the ankle and wrist scars. I didn’t really like the way he was working. It was with sort of flourishing motions like a painter; he was also cocking his head over and eyeing the effects. Silly (bleepard).
With new lights now on her wrists and ankles, he went prowling for more scars or blemishes: he found some ancient signs of slashes along her right ribs, below the breast, probably from the claws of some wild animal she had been training. He fixed those. Then he found some tiny burns on the outside of her left thigh. I knew where those had come from: Lombar’s stinger. He fixed them. Then he studied her whole naked body minutely under a scope. He didn’t seem to be finding any more past wounds or blemishes.
He put cups and straps over the work he had done and I thought he would now be finished.
But no. He got out a little set of tools and began to work on the ends of her fingers. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing. Then it came to me. He was giving her a manicure!
Having finished that quite expertly, he went to her feet and gave her a pedicure! He seemed to be getting her toenails just right.
I thought he would surely be done now. But no! He was getting out another set of tools. He propped her jaws open, did a thorough inspection of her mouth and then, of all things, began to clean and polish her teeth!
Deliver me from idiots! Her smile was about as dangerous a thing as anyone would ever see without making it blindingly bright!
Done with that at last, he pulled the cloths from under her jaws and stood back. He surveyed her long nakedness. Then, busily, he pulled another lamp down on its swing neck, turned it on and passed it the length of her body, stood back and admired the effect and then did it again. He gently turned her over and did the same thing to her back.
He was giving her a suntan!
I had to admit to myself that two or three years in the dungeons of Spiteos and six weeks in a spaceship might make one a bit pale. But he had something else in mind for he was consulting the tables in the big book. He got a meter out. He was apparently measuring skin color! The people of Atalanta are white but it is a white with a faint tan tinge. He was restoring the exact shade!
He was satisfied with that. Now he was checking her hair color. The blond gold of it seemed satisfactory by meter.
He was done! Thank Gods! What a tinkerer!
He threw a blanket over her and picked her up and carried her into the hall. I was with him promptly.
Prahd took her into a private room. He laid her on the bed. He covered her up with sheets and blankets. He made sure the recorder was not exerting any weight on her arm. He arranged her head properly on the pillow.
He left the room and closed the door. He looked at me and there was a dreamy farawayness in his eyes. “You know,” he said, “she was perfectly right. Anybody who messed up such a gorgeous creature should have atom bombs exploding in his head.”
He locked the door and put the key in his pocket. “I’m going to bed now,” he said. “I suggest that you go home.”
He went away. I was absolutely fuming! I was seething at how blind people could be about the real Krak. Here she had added another ally to her mobs of supporters!
Well, I certainly had no intention of going home! She might come out of that room and attack me! She might even blow up the base!
I got a straight-back chair and planted it opposite the door. I gathered up the spacer greatcoat, coveralls and other clothes and put them in a stack beside the chair. I took the spaceboots and put them on their sides on the floor. I tilted the chair back against the wall and put my foot on the spaceboots so that if they were even touched, it would cause my foot to move and bring the chair back forward on its four legs to jolt me awake in case I dozed. I took the catch off my stun gun and gripped its butt.
I looked at the locked door and for the first time since her arrival I began to smile.
Despite her trickery, I had foiled the
Countess Krak. I had finally gained the upper hand. I was impervious to her hypnohelmets while she in turn was now bugged so I could monitor her every move.
Heller, meanwhile, was sinking fast. And if he thought Babe’s wrath was rough, he hadn’t seen anything yet. The best was yet to come.
I folded my arms across my chest and grinned. Gris, I complimented myself, you got ’em. Sending an implanted Krak off to Heller and his whores would be like tossing an anvil to a drowning man.
Then when Hisst sent the okay, I could humanely end Heller’s misery, get the forgeries even if I had to torture the information out of Krak (a delicious thought), sell her to the black market in Istanbul, settle matters with Utanc and then sit back and rake in the money from my host of enterprises.
Sleep well, Countess Krak.
Tomorrow belongs to me.
About the Author
L. Ron Hubbard’s remarkable writing career spanned more than half-a-century of intense literary achievement and creative influence.
And though he was first and foremost a writer, his life experiences and travels in all corners of the globe were wide and diverse. His insatiable curiosity and personal belief that one should live life as a professional led to a lifetime of extraordinary accomplishment. He was also an explorer, ethnologist, mariner and pilot, filmmaker and photographer, philosopher and educator, composer and musician.
Growing up in the still-rugged frontier country of Montana, he broke his first bronc and became the blood brother of a Blackfeet Indian medicine man by age six. In 1927, when he was 16, he traveled to a still remote Asia. The following year, to further satisfy his thirst for adventure and augment his growing knowledge of other cultures, he left school and returned to the Orient. On this trip, he worked as a supercargo and helmsman aboard a coastal trader which plied the seas between Japan and Java. He came to know old Shanghai, Beijing and the Western Hills at a time when few Westerners could enter China. He traveled more than a quarter of a million miles by sea and land while still a teenager and before the advent of commercial aviation as we know it.