I was puzzled. I was getting two sets of footsteps in the Countess Krak’s audio. I couldn’t make it out. I turned Heller’s off for a moment. Yes, two sets of footsteps from the Countess Krak’s speaker.
Very difficult to understand how this was happening.
She was going along the path at least two hundred yards behind Heller, completely out of his view.
He was walking along briskly.
The Countess Krak did not seem to be the least bit concerned about losing him.
Heller came to a high point in the trail. I recognized it. It was the same place he had stood months before when he had been stopped by the gang. This time he looked behind the trees to right and left. Nobody hiding there. But a bullet scar was visible.
He looked down into the vale. New grass was just beginning to spring up. The trees round about were in bud.
Several students were down there, sitting around on broken trunks and stones.
Miss Simmons was standing behind a large, flat stump. It made a sort of an altar facing the class. A sacrificial altar, I trusted.
Heller, unarmed and unsuspecting, walked down the path to the group. Miss Simmons had spotted him from some distance away. When he came up, he would have taken a place back of the other students, a bit off to himself.
Miss Simmons fixed him with a cold eye. She pointed to a white stone near the altar to her right. She said, firmly, “Wister, sit there.”
It was like putting somebody in the dock reserved for the accused. Or, I hoped, the spot where they put the condemned to hear sentence.
Miss Simmons looked to be in the grip of considerable tension. She had on a black topcoat and black slouch hat. She was not wearing her glasses and her hazel eyes were narrow and unreadable as she scanned the approach trail.
Several more students drifted in. A boy said, “Jesus, this ain’t easy to find, Miss Simmons. I almost got lost.”
“Sit down right over there, Roger,” said Miss Simmons in a firm, uncompromising teacher’s voice. She was pointing toward the others.
A bit more time passed. Three more students straggled in. A bit of wind stirred the upper branches of the large trees.
Miss Simmons was counting students aloud.
The Countess Krak was just to the side of the path as it started down into the vale. She stepped behind a large tree, looking down at the people in the hollow.
The counting was also sounding in the Countess Krak’s audio speaker. I wondered how this possibly could be. She was too far away for Miss Simmons’ voice to reach her.
Then the Countess Krak reached up and touched something and the sound came in louder.
THE GLASSES!
She was wearing an Eyes and Ears of Voltar device, disguised as sunglasses, that amplified distant sound. No wonder she could follow Heller. She had had these focused on his footsteps.
She reached up her hand again to the side of the tinted spectacles and suddenly the image of Miss Simmons leaped into closeup. Those things were also telephoto! And they looked like any other pair of sunglasses.
“The hussy,” said the Countess Krak.
“Twenty-nine,” said Miss Simmons, in a cold voice. “And thirty if you count Wister. There are some surprises in store for all of you. We can begin.”
How ominous!
I expected Grafferty or at least police to be waiting around that wood. I hugged myself. If they were, they would catch the Countess Krak! Maybe even arrest Heller for the original eight murders!
PART FORTY-TWO
Chapter 10
Miss Simmons lifted up a sack and placed it on the tree-stump altar. She wrapped her hand around a broken stick and pointed it at Heller.
“You sit right there, Wister, and don’t you move an inch. For you are in for the biggest surprise of all.”
She rapped upon the tree stump with the stick. She fixed them with a baleful eye. She said, “Gather round here, students—closer, for I have just made a terrible discovery.”
They shifted forward and sat in a tighter semicircle before her.
The Countess Krak muttered, “What on Earth is this slut up to now? She wasn’t told to do that.”
I laughed aloud in glee. The Countess had not allowed for my contribution to this day.
Miss Simmons spoke, “As all you students know, my life has been a sort of hell.” She looked at Wister. Then back at the small crowd. “I have been burdened by a demon, a fiend so merciless as to defy all the annals of hell.” The students clucked in sympathy. She turned to Heller, “Sit right there, Wister.”
Miss Simmons sighed and looked back at her class. “Now, students, a vile, foul trick has been played on me. You have all had basic psychology from kindergarten up, so you know about HYPNOTISM!”
A shudder went through the Countess Krak that made her glasses wobble.
Miss Simmons was going on. “In unscrupulous and vicious hands it is a despicable and awful weapon against an innocent and unsuspecting pawn.
“Students,” she continued, “I have been told, under hypnosis, the most disgusting lies you ever could imagine!
“Undiscovered, they could have ruined the remainder of my poor life.
“But, just yesterday, a hidden and unknown friend opened my eyes suddenly to the TRUTH!”
“My Gods,” whispered the Countess Krak.
Miss Simmons went on in ringing tones. “Now listen to this, Wister. Listen to this, students. Listen carefully. I received this letter. It told me I had been hypnotized! Instantly there occurred to me the only possible reason—to undermine my sex life, to leave me open to an awful fate.”
The Countess Krak whispered, “That orgy was your own craven appetite, you false tart!”
Miss Simmons brought the stick down on the stump with a thud. “I went to the police. They told me I could only act if I had the evidence.” She leaned forward confidentially, “I obtained it with another’s help. And I am sitting on it, ready to take an awful vengeance. It is in a secret place, ready to be mailed if there is any effort to do away with me.”
She stepped back proudly. “Oh, I have friends! You should understand that, Wister. You should know that, students. And they will support me in this amongst the highest university faculties.”
Miss Simmons leaned forward impressively again. “You may or may not know that my father holds the chair of psychology at Brooklyn University. Ever since I was a child he has warned me of designing males.” She looked at Heller sitting separately upon his rock. Then she looked back at the class. “My father taught me every night at bedtime that men were no good and only wanted vile gratification of their base desires.”
Miss Simmons looked at Heller. Then back at the twenty-nine other young men and women of her class. They were gazing at her intently, utterly absorbed.
Miss Simmons plunged on. “So when I got that invaluable letter, I realized at once that when it said I had been subjected to hypnotism, it was TRUE!”
She rapped again with her club. “When I had been told by the police I needed evidence, I went directly home. I told my mother and she looked very sad. We went to see my father. He was downcast, for it is an awful thing!”
Miss Simmons stood up straight. “My mother, God bless her, forced him to tell me!”
She leaned forward and spoke in a hissing voice. “My father, that vile fiend, had hypnotized me as a child. Not just once but repeatedly!”
Her face contorted in disgust. “He confessed that he had told me again and again under trance that I was FRIGID! He told me that if I had a man or experienced an orgasm I would go BLIND!”
She banged the stick upon the stump. “He is a craven traitor to psychology! It is supposed to (bleep) everybody, not make them frigid! And I am the living proof that he was mistaken. Look at my eyes! No glasses! Standing here, I can see every pimple on your dear faces!”
Miss Simmons stood back triumphantly. And then she stood in a humbled pose. “But who do I have to thank for this?” She turned to Wister and went ove
r to him and knelt before him. “Oh, Wister, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am eternally grateful to you for letting me be raped. The orgasms were GLORIOUS! Time after time and right here on this very hallowed spot. I never dreamed such joy and ecstasy could exist. And TIME after TIME!”
She tenderly took Heller’s hand. The Countess Krak flinched.
“Oh, dear Wister,” said Miss Simmons. “I know I am not good enough for you. But my gratitude knows no bounds. You have been such an excellent student that I now declare you fully passed for the whole course. I will mark you A+ in Nature Appreciation for you appreciated nature even far better than I.”
Simmons, kneeling, pressed his hand to her lips. She gazed upward into his eyes. “So, dear Wister, you are excused from all further classes, and even though it breaks my heart, you must leave this very minute. My gratitude walks with you forever for letting me be raped. So goodbye, my dearest, beautiful man. Goodbye.”
Heller stood up, looking a little dazed. Then he waved a hand to the rest of the class and walked on up the hill.
Miss Simmons was a bit overcome. She knelt there for a little. Tears were dripping from her eyes. Then she rose and went back to the stump. She stood there, mastering her grief before she talked again.
Heller reached the top of the path. A very alert man of action, he instantly saw a flick of motion behind a tree. Alertly, he stepped over to it.
THE COUNTESS KRAK!
“What are you doing here?” said Heller.
“Just visiting the classroom to see how the pupils were getting on,” said the Countess Krak.
“I’m excused from these classes for the rest of the year,” said Heller. “And even after the UN loss. People knew I was pushing that. I don’t understand it. I think she must have scrambled her main drives.” He was looking back down the trail at the group in the vale. “Maybe I better go back and see if she’s all right.”
The Countess Krak bristled. She said, “Come along, Jettero.”
“No,” he said, “she sort of looked wild in the eye.” He stepped back down the hill a few feet and stopped behind a tree, watching.
PART FORTY-TWO
Chapter 11
Miss Simmons had regained her aplomb. Standing behind the stump, she spoke to the attentive students in clear and educated tones. “So, class, you will be very glad to know that I am no longer under the influence of that traitor to psychology, my father. He was mistaken. I can do what I please with my life.
“I am at last free to teach you what I subconsciously wanted to teach you in Nature Appreciation. Now, Nature Appreciation is really about the birds and bees. So there will be a substantive change in course material.
“We will not use the texts of Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis and Freud, for they are crummy fellows to run around with. Such sources are bad, because they do not have any love in them. Instead, the text we will now use for this class is a classic Persian book, The Seventy and Seven Variations in the Act of Love by Hammer Hammer, translated by the respectable Chinese scholar Kum Chu Longdong, with beautiful illustrations and diagrams by Phullup Cummings. I was able to get these at the college bookstore last night.”
She flipped open the sack on the stump and began to pass them around. The students took them with great interest. “Now, girls, open your books to Chapter One, ‘The Essentials of Orgasm.’ But the boys should open theirs to Chapter Thirteen, ‘Variations of Gang Rape.’”
The Countess Krak, able to see those pages with her sunglasses, muttered, “Now I know for sure why he was so tired Sunday nights. The slut! Jettero,” she said in a louder voice, “I think we better be going.”
He couldn’t hear what Miss Simmons had been saying. He shook his head. “I think that it’s material I didn’t get on the course.”
The Countess Krak drummed her fingernails against the tree she was behind but she said nothing.
Miss Simmons said, “Now, students, I know the text is in Chinese, but the diagrams are very explicit, so simply notice the details for now. You can go over it more thoroughly in your homework. The point I am now trying to make is that nothing serves to teach better than experience. So I am going to lie down on this nice grass behind me here and you, Roger, are going to take my coat off.”
Roger, a gangling youth, bounded to her side.
Heller, looking down into the glade, shook his head.
Miss Simmons’ coat went flying through the air.
Miss Simmons’ voice was coming over the Countess Krak’s speaker. The tones were heavy with emotion. “For classwork during the remainder of the term, each boy of the class must first handle me and then each female classmate.”
Heller, who had no speaker, turned to Krak. “She’s saying something about classwork. I’m afraid I’m not going to get the whole subject.”
“I’ll say you’re not,” said the Countess Krak in a deadly voice.
Roger’s coat hit the ground.
Heller stared. He looked back at the Countess Krak. “Why are they stripping? That brook isn’t deep enough to swim in.”
“Jettero,” called the Countess Krak. “It’s getting late.”
Heller was staring down into the vale. Some cries were coming from there. “What on Earth?” he muttered.
A stack of schoolbooks lying on a bank slid down. One fell open at the bottom. A splash of mud hit it, splat.
“The hussy!” gritted the Countess Krak. “No wonder his clothing was all muddy every Sunday when he came home!”
“What did you say, dear?” said Heller. “I think they’ve gone crazy down there!”
The Countess Krak was fuming. Through her speaker came Miss Simmons’ voice. “Now, Roger, we’ll call that a pass. Thompson and Oswald, you come over here at once. The rest of you get busy. BUSY! BUSY!”
A boot landed in the brook with a tremendous splash!
Three girls’ jackets went flying up in the air!
The very trees were shaking!
The Countess Krak had a leafy willow in her hand. Miss Simmons’ strained voice came through the speaker. “Remember, it’s no good without love. So I love you and you love me. OH, OSWALD!” The Countess snapped the willow with a furious jerk.
Heller was standing there, utterly flabbergasted.
The Countess Krak came up behind him, tugging at his sleeve to pull him away.
He shook his head as though trying to wake up. Then he turned and started back toward the car. “Blazes,” he said, “am I glad to be out of that course! Teaching on this planet can get rough!”
“You mean,” said the Countess Krak, “that some people on this planet can’t even get the simplest lessons straight. The tart!”
Heller looked at her. She was taking off the glasses. She put them in a case.
He was gazing at her very suspiciously. “Did you have something to do with that?”
Her look was very bland and guileless. The very soul of innocence, she said, “Me? Jettero!”
That did it so far as I was concerned. The whole thing had gone wronger than wrong. Who would ever have suspected that Simmons’ father, a renowned psychologist, would go against his whole profession and try to suppress promiscuous sex, the very backbone of Earth psychiatric treatment.
But I had only overlooked two minor points: In her hypnotic commands the Countess Krak quite accidentally had told her her father was mistaken, so no credit for the eyesight recovery was due to the Countess Krak. The other point was the order to Miss Simmons to disregard anything that happened in the living room the next day and to find a reasonable explanation for it. The latter unfortunately had included my letter. And that, too, was pure accident on Krak’s part.
Oh, she was no genius. She was just lucky in a crude female way. Women simply do not have the brains to anticipate trouble like that. All they have is the ability to make vicious and cruel trouble for men. I knew by bitter experience this was their foremost skill. Look at the trouble she was causing me! Costing me priceless allies like Simmons, burning up my cash r
eserves by throwing around that credit card.
In a brilliant flash, as clear as lightning itself, I understood something utterly: In order to thoroughly wreck Heller, I would first and foremost have to get rid of the Countess Krak!
And then another lightning bolt. Whereas I could not slaughter Heller until I got the word from Lombar that the former’s communication line to the Grand Council no longer mattered, there was NO restraint of ANY kind WHATEVER in removing the Countess Krak. She could be dropped off buildings or ground to mush under the heavy wheels of trains and I would suffer not the blink of an eye about it from Lombar.
AHA! I knew now what I had to do.
Concentrate on that deadly female.
She was expendable! She was the major barrier!
Unlike Heller, she was not trained in avoiding snipers. She knew nothing about car bombs. She had no war experience with booby traps or mines.
I could do it! I would do it!
And my eyes slitted with firm resolve.
GET RID OF THE COUNTESS KRAK!
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.