BLITO-P3—EARTH—EXISTS!
AND THE PLACE WHERE IT SHOULD BE IN THE INVASION TIMETABLE IS BLANK!
Isn’t that monstrous?
And if it hadn’t been removed, it would be scheduled for invasion just a few years from now.
THE PEOPLE OF VOLTAR MUST KNOW ABOUT THIS!
THEY’RE BEING DEPRIVED OF A PERFECTLY GOOD PLANET TO INVADE!
Despite what Soltan Gris said at the very beginning of his confession about Heller being the hero of it, I must solemnly advise you that this isn’t true!
The actual villain of this whole disgraceful affair is NO OTHER THAN JETTERO HELLER!
He has been lurking behind the scenes, POSING as a hero, when in actual, sober, solemn fact, JETTERO HELLER WAS THE VILLAIN, DOUBLE-DYED, ALL THE TIME!
JETTERO HELLER was the one who instigated the greatest coverup in ALL VOLTAR HISTORY!
That makes him the villain. Right?
Well, enough said. You better make your voice heard to remedy this scandal. There is still time to get at it right on schedule!
PEOPLE OF VOLTAR, INSIST ON ADHERENCE TO TRADITION!
OUR ANCESTORS DETERMINED THAT EARTH SHOULD BE INVADED ON SCHEDULE.
My message to you: SWEEP ASIDE THIS COVERUP AND INVADE!
NOT THE END
I finished the book up to here and before I wrapped it up to send it to the publisher, I read it all to Shafter (Hound wouldn’t listen because he saw it had some poetry in it).
When I got all done, expecting to see Shafter absolutely stunned, he didn’t stun. He laid down his wrench—I had had to follow him around while he did routine inspections which were behind—and he looked at me and said, “Young Monte, for the love of comets, you’ve left so many strings untied it looks like the wiring when you get to fooling with an engine and I don’t stop you. You completely left out what you found on your visit to Manco and you haven’t said a blasted thing about all the trouble we had over Relax Island. The book is fine so far, but you’ve left it at ten thousand feet. Land it, boy, land it. Finish it up in style!”
So, as Shafter is my best critic—the only one I have so far—I sweated and slaved and added an “Envoi.” All for you, dear reader, so you won’t be left ten thousand feet up with no landing in sight. Read on. Be careful not to crash! Readers are valuable!
PART NINETY
ENVOI I
I
Hightee Heller, after two weeks assisting me dig up old papers and logs—but spending most of her time rambling around old haunts on Manco—had to return to the planet Voltar to keep a long-arranged engagement to appear at a benefit on Hightee Heller Day, an annual event.
At the shuttleport where she was catching the deluxe spaceliner for Voltar, she gave me a pat on the shoulder and a motherly kiss on the cheek and said, “Now, don’t forget to lay the real stress of your book on my brother’s later life. As a writer you must see that he gets good press: he’s FAR too reticent about himself. So ta-ta now. I’m leaving you in good hands. It’s been fun. Goodbye.”
As the shuttle took off upward and I waved, I was thinking that it might have been just fun for her—it had been deadly serious hard work for me and it would continue! I had almost worn my thumb off clicking copies of logs and documents, my ears ached with the high whine of copying recording strips. And while I had the story down to the end of the last fatal war council about Earth (and had yet to spend many hard weeks writing what you have just so quickly read), I as yet did not have the final tag ends all tied neatly. How hard, how very hard I have worked for you, dear reader!
The chauffeur was waiting as arranged by Hightee, and I was flown back to the vast estates of the Duke and Duchess of Manco where we had been staying. The estates embrace a whole range of wild mountains and a thousand square miles of fertile plain adjacent to a city—provincial, but three times the size of New York—named Atalanta.
We landed in the Rose Park and I was in luck. The Duchess, just that minute, was entering a salon.
She was tall and blonde and, despite being in her late middle age and despite children, quite beautiful. The years had been very kind to the one-time Countess Krak.
“Hello, Monte,” she said. “You look quite worn. Did Hightee get off all right?”
I nodded. The Duchess of Manco usually made me feel a little bit tongue-tied and awkward: she moved with an easy grace and her gray-blue eyes looked at you with an impact. She was dressed in leather today and had probably been out supervising things around the estate.
“Your Grace,” I managed, “if you will give me a little time, there are some loose ends I haven’t tied up.”
She smiled. “Well, come in and sit down and fire away. I need to catch my breath, myself. My latest grandchild has been running everyone’s legs off all day. He’s been into everything on the place! He’s only seven but he takes a dozen people to keep him from an early demise. Exactly like his grandfather.” And she went on to tell me, very proudly, how they’d just now fished him out of an irrigation lake when his self-built boat had capsized. His mother had evidently taken him home to the city where his father, Heller’s younger son, was governor.
The park day salon was nice and cool, very rustic, all of native stone with an actual fireplace. You could have drilled a company in it. The walls were lined with paintings. There were Jettero’s three sons, all middle-aged now but in the paintings still boys: two were shown in the uniforms of the Royal Academy and the third in the helmet of a speed flier. Their own daughter was shown, painted as costumed in some school play: she looked startlingly like Hightee, but she had something in the way she stood that was definitely Krak.
The Duchess called for some cool drinks and rambled on about her grandchildren, of whom she now had six. The eldest of these, at forty, had just ambitiously taken on the stewardship of the Krak estates in northern Atalanta, since he would inherit the title, and was apparently wrestling at the moment with a flood. I was not very attentive. I was trying to get a word in edgewise and get my story tied up.
I had a little list. I peeked at it and in a lull, I said, “Could you tell me whatever happened to Mister Calico?”
She laughed and gave a small, sharp whistle. In about thirty seconds a calico cat came tearing into the room and leaped up on her lap. I was stunned. “Is this Mister Calico?”
She laughed again, for the cat had looked up searchingly at me and then, deciding I hadn’t meant it, went back to lapping at the sparklewater canister she was holding for him.
Then she looked a little sad. “About ten years after we returned from Earth, Jettero and Mister Calico were taking a walk up in the mountains. You realize I never did get Jettero to lead a nice, safe life, but in this case he was simply limbering up after a long session in Palace City. They weren’t even hunting. And Mister Calico spotted a lepertige! He tackled it head on! Imagine jumping on a ton of lepertige! But that was Mister Calico. Before Jettero could stop him, he’d come off second best.”
She sighed. Then she pointed. “That’s the lepertige pelt right over there by the fireplace. It’s pretty ratty for this room, I know, but Jettero would never let me throw it away. And that’s what happened to Mister Calico.”
The cat in her lap looked up at the name again. She said, “However, once every generation since that time, after the old one is dead, another cat gets born in the litters that answers to the name of Mister Calico without ever being told. This is the tenth one!
“You know,” she continued proudly, “since we brought these cats to Manco, there isn’t a single vermin left in the province. I just hope these felines don’t take it into their heads to wipe out the lepertiges!”
I had my next item. “There were five ships sent from Earth to Calabar. Did they ever arrive?”
“Oh, Faht Bey’s crew. Oh, yes. They operated the Fleet repair base on Calabar for some years and then retired and went home. That reminds me, I have a postcard here someplace I haven’t answered. He retired as postmaster in some little town in Flisten and
his daughter got the post. She’s half Turkish, you know. I must get a new social secretary. When you finish your book, you wouldn’t care for the job, would you, Monte?”
I cringed. These elderly people were all alike. They didn’t think investigative reporting was serious business! Well, I’d show them!
“Now,” I said, ignoring the offer sternly, “when all those criminals were amnestied, was there any social upheaval? I mean, a new crime wave?”
“Oh, what would make you think that? Factually, they all seemed to think they owed Mortiiy something and most of them reformed. Let me see, it was so long ago. Oh, yes. Only one percent were ever apprehended again and executed. It was a period that was almost crimeless. I remember a party now at the end of the first year. It was sort of my amnesty, you know. But since that time the state actually hasn’t had any crime waves, as you call them. Even Slum City got cleaned up.”
“Well, that’s fine,” I said. “Now could you tell me if you ever, in any way, heard any more about a man called Izzy Epstein?”
She looked at me a little strangely. Then she shrugged and sent a footman off. He came back presently with a metal box. She opened it, took out some sheets and set the box down on the floor. I would have loved to see what was in the rest of that box but she only offered me the sheets she held. Then just as quickly she took them back. “I forgot,” she said, “that you wouldn’t be able to read English.”
The sheets were very, very old and yellowed and she handled them very gently. She put them back in the box and brought out a piece of translating paper in not much better shape. She gave me that.
II
I took an immediate photograph of the cover note and translation, and I give them to you in full:
CONFIDENTIAL
From: Censorship Clerk
To: The Duchess of Manco, Palace City
Your Grace:
Crown, His Lordship, when this was called to his attention, directed that this be forwarded to you, under seal, as a matter of personal interest.
It was brought in by a routine military survey sent by the Chairman of Intelligence.
It was found on a post in a mountain cone. The envelope, as you will note, is simply addressed, “Mister Jet.” The date is concurrent with the tenth year of reign of the Emperor Mortiiy.
The translation follows:
Dear Mr. Jet:
This is just to let you know that your penthouse is all ready and waiting when you come back.
The clothes in the closets are in good shape but a little out of date. Styles have changed in ten years. Your tailor calls from time to time to see if you need anything new.
Mr. Stampi of the Spreeport Speedway called and asked if you would like to race in the new American Grand Prix. He said he reinstated all your memberships and you were right out front with him.
“Queen” Babe Corleone speaks of you often. Just the other day, at the world board meeting, she said she missed “Prince Charming” and cried a little bit. She said maybe Jerome had never forgiven her after all, because he didn’t come back. She is doing fine, though. The American Rifle Association elected her Woman of the Year. There are no other mobs now, only Corleone.
She is very popular and her name is up in lights over the UN since she ordered them to pass the Women’s Thermonuclear Rights Bill.
Vantagio has your portrait in the lobby of the Gracious Palms but I don’t think you’d like it with all the ribbons across the chest: it makes you look like some famous politician and that’s dangerous. The girls there seem to like it, though, and keep votive candles going in front of it.
I think Bang-Bang misses you. He keeps talking about the “good old days with Jet.” We made him a five-star general of the Army so he could show them how to drill.
Bury, I’m sorry to say, showed his true colors. After he disposed of Miss Peace and Miss Agnes, his wife disappeared. She was last seen being introduced to an anaconda at the Bronx Zoo.
You may not have heard that the mayor’s wife was exiled by Babe to the island of Elba. Well, she escaped. Evidence exists that she had a rendezvous with Bury, also at the zoo. She has not been seen since.
Twoey is not around very much. We can barely get him in long enough to sign papers that apply to Rockecenter interests. He’s bought all the pig farms in New Jersey and spends most of his time there. He named a new prize-winning sow “The Beautiful Krackle,” but please don’t tell Miss Joy, as I don’t think she’d like it. But he thought she’d be pleased and he plagued us for weeks trying to find out where she was so he could show her all the blue ribbons it won.
I doubt you’d bother your important head twice wondering about me. I almost died last month when they gave me an honorary degree at Barvard to signalize the conversion of the last government on Earth to a corporation. I needed you to keep me from running away which, I am ashamed to say, I did.
I keep your office dusted. Your old baseball cap has about fallen apart where you left it on your desk. I am afraid to touch it.
So anyway, Mr. Jet, when you’re finished surveying the Moon in depth or whatever is keeping you away, your condo penthouse is still waiting. The gardeners keep the garden up and there isn’t even any dust around. I go there now and then and pretend you’ll soon come home. It sort of calms me. I hope you don’t mind.
Yours very truly,
Izzy
PS: I would ask you to give Miss Joy my best but she probably doesn’t remember me.
PPS: I do hope she is enjoying her life as Mrs. Jettero Heller and the wife of an officer of the Fleet.
III
I was STUNNED!
I looked at the Duchess and said, “He knew his ‘Mr. Jet’ was an extraterrestrial all the time! And, just like Izzy, he simply kept his mouth shut! But HOW did he find out?” Oh, I had Heller now! Caught red-handed in a flagrant Code break!
“Jettero’s name was on a receipt from the Fleet pasted inside the time-sight he was given. And in the Empire State Building office, Jettero had a full library of Voltarian including a Voltarian-English dictionary. Izzy must have recognized the characters and translated the receipt.
“But there’s something else: Utanc—Colonel Gaylov—reported to Rockecenter that Afyon was an extraterrestrial base. Those files all fell into the hands of Izzy. He must have put six and six together and even when he found the base was destroyed, he guessed somebody would come again or had contacts and he just left the letter.”
“Amazing!” I said. I gave her back the translation after making sure I had shot a copy of it. I checked my recorder secretly to make sure it was still running. “Now, I have another on my list: Snelz. What happened to him?”
She was looking at me very oddly now. But she said, “Snelz retired as a brigadier general of Fleet Marines half a century ago. He’s been dead for twenty years. But listen, young Monte, I’ve just noticed something very odd: the questions you’ve been asking relate to Earth.”
She pointed her finger at me. I thought that I was caught. But she said, “Now listen, young Monte, we’ve shown you all his papers and his logs and you MUST cover Jettero’s whole career. It’s brilliant! Hightee and I have to nag and nag to even get him to let the papers quote him. He won’t even answer questionnaires from the encyclopedia people: he just tells them, ‘See last year!’ and they take it as an order and publish him as a space racer when he was young! He’s quite impossible! He never gets the slightest credit for all he’s done. It’s VAST! Earth was just a tiny, tiny part of it. In fact, if I were you, I’d sort of shy away from it. It’s too unimportant. Good heavens, even the Colipin invasion is more interesting than that. He gave the Emperor Mortiiy an absolute fit! We lost five squadrons and Jettero got so upset he grabbed the creaky old Retribution and went right over there and won the war and had peace in a week. And Mortiiy, who’d gone touring to inspect Calabar, belatedly heard about it and came rushing home thinking he’d have to take over the government and he came storming into the Grand Council hall and Jettero was sitting r
ight there and Mortiiy roared, ‘What the blazes do you mean going out risking your life in that confounded war?’ and Jettero just smiled and said, ‘What war, Your Majesty?’ and handed him the treaty of peace. And even Mortiiy had to break out laughing, he looked so innocent. But the papers never even MENTIONED it! We gave you access to the logs and files so you could really tell people about him.”
I smiled. I was going to. Though not what she expected. I knew that an investigative reporter had to be very cunning, so I said, “I certainly will take your advice, Your Grace.”
But whether she would have pursued it or not, I would never know.