I couldn’t resist overwhelming them. “Emperor,” I whispered.
“Well, he’s got enough rivals,” said the Bait Office clerk. “I hear Prince Mortiiy is making real headway over on Calabar. You using this to tag some of his lot?”
I frowned. It was the best ploy. It made him think he had come too close. He nodded wisely. But he said, “Don’t plant too many of those hundreds. They’re the ones that even bluebottles can spot. Mortiiy’s agents themselves could detect them and knock you off.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “Not a word of this to anyone, no records.”
“Right! We got to get rid of lice like that Mortiiy. Did you know he promised to abolish the Apparatus?”
My escort said, “Silly (bleepard). How can anyone run a government without an Apparatus?”
“Maybe you’ve guessed too far,” I said.
That put him in his place. But he was now anxious to please. “That uniform looks awfully chewed up. There were some General Services officers killed in a gas leak they were investigating last week. Didn’t hurt their uniforms a bit. Maybe we’ve got your size.”
They did have! It only smelled a little bit like gas. I changed. And while I was changing, I noticed a luggage item on a shelf. Being well trained, I knew what it was. It’s called a “magic bottom.” When an inspector opens it the interior rotates in such a way that he never detects he is always searching the same side.
“Take it along,” said my escort, quite friendly now.
I stuffed the counterfeit money in it and then, lacking something to make the rotation work—something to inspect—I took some cans of food off a shelf marked:
POISONED FOOD
and put them in. The Apparatus thinks of everything.
“Don’t offer me none of those counterfeits as a tip,” said the escort. “I’m a lot too young to die!”
I guffawed over it. A really good joke. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized he had been hinting for a tip in real money. That accounted for the sour way he let me out.
But then, I had other things on my mind. If that patrol craft crew was in Spiteos, they would soon be unable to testify to anyone. They would have given me the data I needed about Heller and they would soon thereafter be dead, if not from poisoned food, then from trying to pass counterfeit money to the guards.
One has to be thorough. One has to be neat in the Apparatus.
PART SEVEN
Chapter 2
We set off on our mission of mercy; and indeed, anyone would be better off dead than held in the dungeons of Spiteos. So it was no criminal act, I fully realized. It was even a friendly thing to do.
Besides, Heller would kill me if he knew that a Fleet crew had been kidnapped the same night he had been. Dead crews don’t blab, as my favorite Apparatus school instructor used to say.
Beyond all this, however, was the possibility that this crew knew something about Heller’s habits that would make it possible for me to get back in control of things. The craftleader had said so in the dream and, as psychology teaches you, dreams never lie.
My driver said, “I smell gas!” He was looking around, sniffing. He rolled a window down despite the heavy slipstream and smelled outside. He decided the smell was inside. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Smells like sewer gas and cadavers all mixed up. And I just cleaned up the car, too.”
I ignored him. We were just passing over the last edges of Government City and had not yet gone over the barrier mountains to the Great Desert. I wanted to get this magic bag fixed. I dumped it all out on the airbus floor.
Even though it was deadly counterfeit, the money sure was beautiful. Stacks of it! I piled it around in the airbus back, admiring that lovely gold paper.
“My Gods!” said my driver. “Did you hold up a Finance Office all by yourself?”
There had been awe and sudden respect in his voice, usually so absent. I was sorry I had to crush it. But it was necessary in case he got ideas of larceny himself. “You better leave this money alone,” I said. “Every credit of it is totally counterfeit.” I passed him a bill.
“Looks real,” he said, handing it back quickly, like it was poison. “Who you planning to kill off? The whole of Camp Endurance?”
That was none of his business and he knew it. So I began to arrange the money in stacks. But the more I looked at it, the less willing I was to simply give it away. Thriftiness is a trait.
I decided I had better not be going around with a wallet looking so empty. So I took a couple hundreds, a few fifties, a couple twenties, some fives and quite a few ones. My wallet looked nice and fat. Good for show, even though I could get killed for passing it. I put the wallet in my tunic where it felt very comfortable.
Then I studied the problem of buying information from the crew. I was just plain unwilling to part with very much of this money. It looked so real.
There is a toolbox compartment in the rear floor of an airbus. My driver, of course, had long since sold the tools and the hole was pretty big. Lifting the cover, I studied things out.
I made a firm decision. I removed the remaining ones and fives from the mass and put them in the magic bag. And then I put all the rest of that lovely looking, deadly money in the tool compartment and locked it. I had fought the battle of giving it away or keeping it and giving it away had lost! I put the thin stack of ones and fives in the hidden compartment of the magic bag. Then, with sudden inspiration, I also hid the poisoned food in it. I had just decided on a new course of bribery.
We were past the mountains now and I spent my time looking down. According to Lombar’s orders, there should be the burned-out wreck of a patrol craft in the Great Desert. The whitish expanses were white. The sun-dancers danced but not over any trace of a wreck. Never mind, I would first see if the crew had ever arrived at Spiteos and after that I could search for the wreck. Maybe the newssheets hadn’t heard of it: after all, they are just newssheets, mostly trash.
We landed at Camp Kill. The driver ground-wheeled along the cluttered streets of the slummy place and, at my direction, stopped at the brothel control office. I went in, carrying the magic bag.
The commandant of Camp Endurance might make a fortune out of the place but actually the superannuated females who run it don’t much care whether it runs or not. Sloppy. There was garbage lying all over the floors and the bulletin boards hadn’t been posted for years. The female in charge didn’t even have a desk.
She may have once been beautiful, now she looked like an executive. Four hundred pounds of fat slumped over the edges of a half-recline chair, wearing a dirty towel, she didn’t even look up until I stamped my foot.
“I want a mute for fortress bribery,” I said. They often take hill girls from other planets and cut out their larynx: they can’t speak Voltarian anyway. Only a prostitute that is mute can be passed through the tunnel. Others at Camp Kill might suspect what was in Spiteos but none must be able to talk about it. It was common enough to entice a prisoner with a woman if it was thought he would not talk under torture. A lot of riffraff will do anything in return for a female.
She looked at me with contempt. Then she put out a filthy hand. Her attitude was such that I decided she would be better off executed anyway. I got out my wallet and put a counterfeit fifty in her palm with a great show of reluctance.
Really, it was like shooting a blaster into a jelly bowl, the way she shattered. She reassembled the globs into an ingratiating smile. She crooned over the fifty. She was no trained cashier!
“I may need her for some time,” I said.
That had no bearing on it. She screeched in the direction of a hall and shortly a couple other old hags dragged out a young girl. Dirty, bedraggled, she was nevertheless fairly pretty. I checked the larynx: it had been removed. She stood there, beaten, dejected. From the back country of Flisten, I guessed, kidnapped on some government raid into the primitive country. She certainly did not look able to arouse anyone, pretty or not.
“And some tr
icks,” I demanded. They have a lot of erotic gadgets that vibrate and do other things.
No trouble with that. Another screech and another crone came out with hands full of tricks. I dumped them into the visible compartment of the magic bag.
The girl only had a loincloth on, a dirty one. But clothes were no point. Then I thought of something. “There’s a lot of men involved. She may get pretty used up.”
The fat old bat said, “We got ’em by the hundreds.” She kissed the fifty. “Kill her. Who cares?”
One of the other old hags looked at me archly and pulled back her loincloth. “You want something for yourself, dearie?”
Not a Camp Kill prostitute! I got out of there.
I gave the girl the bag to carry. It was a very cunning move. If any counterfeits were traced, they would be traced to her.
At the tunnel barricade, I told the guards, “Bribe meat. I’d appreciate it if you would search her for weapons and all that. She’s too dirty.”
A guardsman grinned, put on a pair of gloves, took her aside and had himself some nice feels. He and the barricade officer were so engrossed, I had to tell them to search the bag. Of course, they would find only the erotic tricks.
When they had, I said, “Note the search on the pass.”
“For how long?” said the barricade officer.
“Mark it indefinite,” I said. “They might not talk just on the promise of one go.”
The guard officer laughed. “Wish I had a secret good enough for this.”
He let me put my identoplate on the pass and then handed it over.
The girl looked more beaten down. I had been surprised to see her blush at the guard’s handling of certain places. Prostitutes are very cold meat usually. Riffraff. Riding the zipbus, she began to look terrified. Maybe she had never ridden a zipbus before. It was true that now and then a prostitute taken into the fortress never came out again, got overworked and died at it or was simply murdered for kicks. But how would she know? She didn’t understand Voltarian and couldn’t talk either.
When we got off at the Spiteos end, she didn’t want to get off the bus! I had to hit her, drag her off and then had trouble making her stand up. I kicked her and forced the bag into her hands. I actively had to keep thrusting at her back to keep her walking ahead.
It dawned on me that I had been swindled. This was one of those noncompliant, won’t types the customers reject. They had given me this girl because she was useless to them! Ah, well, I had my revenge already. The brothel executive would be no more if she tried to pass that fifty. It amused me. Trouble for trouble, fair exchange! But one trouble seems to breed another. In the roster office, the half-naked, yellow-man clerk spent a long time over the records. Spiteos records are pretty bad—nobody ever gets out. But to have no trace at all of an entrance is pretty unusual.
I gave him the probable date and hour. No, nothing. I was just beginning to believe they had never arrived when the yellow-man said, “Military? Did you say military? Well, you should have given me that data. They would be in the military section.”
With considerable directions, taking some more tubes, finding out I had gone too deep and coming back—and all the while enduring the trouble of thrusting this girl ahead of me—I wound up in another section of Spiteos with an office even closer to the entrance than I had first visited. Spiteos is quite a snarl.
I found myself in a guardroom. There were about twenty-four actual guards, uniformed and in riot helmets, sprawled about, some of them shaking dice, others snoring.
The officer was a shabby type—what else in the Apparatus. His contingent was evidently a daily guard from the camp. These were not the usual wardens.
He had no interest in the girl—boys were probably his twist. He had no interest in anything, apparently, but getting his twelve-hour shift over with, getting back to camp and his own vices.
It turned out that there had been a riot amongst military rank-and-file prisoners a century ago and so captures of nonofficer prisoners of possible future value were slammed into the military section. He explained all this to me, yawning.
I gave him the number of men, date and time they must have been entered. He looked at his watch as though I was using up valuable time. But he said, “Two more hours to go in this stinking place.” He searched around and finally found the rosters under some abandoned equipment. He sat down at a mess table and began to go through them.
He shook his head. And just when I had decided they’d never arrived, he put his finger down on a page and traced it along.
“Your date is wrong,” he said peevishly. “Forty-eight hours off. Here they are, but it’s two days later than you said. You ought to keep better administration!” As though I had charge of their records! “They’re in block five. You understand, I can’t give you any other data than that. It isn’t that it’s secret, it just isn’t here. ‘Twenty men,’ it says, ‘military, potentially dangerous. Hold until further orders.’ No other orders noted so they’re still there. Jeemp!” he said to a lolling subofficer, “show this guy where’s block five.”
I noted none of them gave the prostitute a passing glance. They were obviously daily back and forth from the camp. All the better. This crew in here would have no easy time of it as they would have buying from the usual wardens. The money, even counterfeit, would be nearly worthless to them and would be detected sooner as counterfeit. These tough mugs would kill them if they tried to pass it. Riot helmets. I was encouraged.
I thrust the prostitute along after Jeemp. We went through some old black tunnels and he finally stopped and pointed. “It’s down there someplace.” He left.
The area made me nervous. I loosened the stun gun in its holster, checked the knife behind my neck and the blasticks in my pockets. Most of the glowplates had blown out. Water was trickling somewhere. Some large type of vermin leaped out of a sagging cell door. It scared me.
All these black-walled cells and rooms were empty save for some bones. It was all quite different than the area they had put Heller in.
The military section wasn’t very military! It was a good thing I was taking care of this. Dead crews don’t blab.
PART SEVEN
Chapter 3
I looked through a grate at the very end. And there they were, twenty men. Their clothes had been stolen, of course, and they were naked. They were draped about on stone ledges. But they didn’t look in too bad a shape. I saw why, then: there was a pile of vermin bones in the middle of the floor and a very active stream of water, an underground seepage, trickled blackly down a blacker wall.
I pushed the prostitute into a nearby empty cell. I would save her for a surprise.
I decided to be brisk. I shouted through the grate, “Who’s in charge here?”
A tall, husky guy got off the bench; he came over to the grate. “And who the Hells are you?” he said.
Not very beaten down! Well, they’d had vermin to eat and there was water coming down the wall they could catch. They probably didn’t see a guard more than once a day and yet here was somebody being spunky.
I decided to be military, “The number of your patrol craft, please.”
“So you know we’re a Fleet crew,” he said. “And what happens when Fleet finally finds out what was done with us?”
“Come, come,” I said. “I am here to help you. Do not take that tone with me, my man. Give your craft number, name and rank.”
Somebody amongst the rest said, “No harm. He knows it anyway.”
The one at the door shrugged. “Craftleader Soams, Fleet Patrol Craft B-44-A-539-G. Who are you and where are we?”
Ah, they didn’t know where they were. Excellent.
Now, there are two approaches one can use. The first is to be friendly, the second is to extort. Being friendly takes time.
“In return for certain information, I can give you certain things. They will make your life easier. Don’t bargain. I haven’t got much time.”
The others were stirring aroun
d now; they formed a half circle behind him.
I went back and got some of the counterfeit out of the bag. I left the girl hidden. I returned and waved the notes.
“If you will tell me everything you know about one Jettero Heller, a combat engineer, who accompanied you on your last patrol, this is yours.”
He went back and they put their heads together. They whispered for quite a while. I could see their various ranks from their conduct. A Fleet patrol craft does not have Royal officers—there are too many patrol craft. The “captain” is called a “craftleader.” He has two subofficer pilots, a subofficer engineer and odds and ends of specialists who attend to things like finance and food and then a few common spacers. You could see who was who in the deference paid to whispers. They sort of consulted by chain of command. But awfully democratic. They’re different than the Army, it is said, because of living so tight together and at such long times in space.