Then I got a box from the shelf and with loving care put the two complete sets and directions in it and lashed it closed and marked it with a big X. With Raza Torr escorting me, I carefully put it in his stolen car.
I went back and found some more big boxes and ransacked the vault. I didn’t know what the stuff was and I certainly didn’t stop to read the directions. Who cared what assortment of sophisticated gear I was taking. It had to look like a massive burglary.
I even made Raza Torr carry some of the filled boxes to the stolen car. The back was getting pretty full.
I then really put Raza Torr to work. We lugged the colonel’s body out and put it in the back seat of his car. We lugged the driver out and put him in the driving seat.
Then I grabbed a blastick and took the safety off so any jar would fire it and put it in the colonel’s cooling hand.
I fumbled a bit with the automatic pilot, finally got it set. I started the car. I engaged it and away it flew, higher and higher in the sky, probably heading for Slum City. In an hour or so it would probably run out of fuel or crash into another aircar in the traffic lanes.
I found a can of cleaning spirits and poured it over the counter and around Spurk’s body. I dropped an igniter in it and the flame exploded up.
“Let’s get out of here!” said Torr. He was clutching the camera.
We got into the stolen car.
“I take it back,” he said, putting the camera down. “You sure are thorough!”
“I sure am,” I said, and I put ten inches of the Knife Section knife into his back.
Flames were leaping up in the store. Far out I heard a fire-alert siren start.
I pushed Raza’s body aside and slid under the wheelstick. The aircar soared into the night sky and was quickly mingled with the flow of traffic.
I flew out over the River Wiel. I put the aircar on hover. I pulled the knife out and cleaned it.
Almost over his Provocation Section area, I dumped Raza Torr’s body out. Too bad not to have the use of the section anymore but I would soon be gone anyway. Tomorrow, if I thought of it, I would mail those pictures of him murdering the mistress to the Commander of the Death Battalion. A poetic touch. No, maybe to the newssheets. No, better not. Let sleeping corpses lie. One can get too artistic.
I flew to my office area. Nothing and nobody there at this time of night. My airbus was parked and locked. I carried my loot into a basement under my office.
I spent an hour eradicating all trace of Eyes and Ears and pasting labels of Zanco on the boxes. Then I put some I didn’t want into the stolen car, set it on automatic and let it fly off to crash somewhere. Help the police is my motto.
Then I put every scrap of clothes that had any blood on it or that led back to the Provocation Section into the permanent disintegrator, washed any remaining blood off myself in the toilet and dressed in my own uniform.
Just to put finishing touches on it all, I wrapped Prahd Bittlestiffender’s old coat, his identoplate and suicide note in a package and addressed it to the police. Found by the River Wiel, the note said. I put it beside my desk to be mailed in ten days.
It was all neatening up. I opened my secret blackmail cache under a loose floorboard and took out the originals of Raza Torr’s murder. I removed all the strips from his camera, verified them, and put the lot in the disintegrator.
The (bleeped) fool. Had I brought him here, he would have spotted my whole cache and I doubted he would have kept his word. He might even have tried to kill me once he had his hands on these pictures. The (bleeped) fool. As to his own pictures, they were worthless. Every one of me had been in disguise. Nobody could have identified me from them. Still, he had been a witness. And there is an old Apparatus motto that even he should have remembered: the careless die young. I yawned. I locked up. I walked down to my room to get some sleep.
All in all, it had been a pretty active day! But not too unusual in the life of an Apparatus officer. Frankly, it’s hard to see how a government could run at all without clever and dedicated people such as us in their employ. The whole structure might come tumbling down!
PART TEN
Chapter 7
The day began a bit sourly. My driver was in a foul mood. When he brought the airbus by to pick me up, I had quite pleasantly asked him if he had had a good time on his night off and all the way to my office I had been treated to “How could somebody with no money have a good time?” and “One would starve if he went long enough without eating” and some distempered tale about some officer that had crashed because his driver was so worried about being a pauper. I was in too good a mood. I ignored it.
At the office, I set him to carrying the “Zanco” marked cartons from the basement to the back of the car and he kept throwing them in so forcefully with comments like “I work myself to death cleaning up this car and here we go again” and “This ain’t no truck” that I got out of the back—there would be no room anyway when it was loaded—and bought a sweetbun and hot jolt from a passing vendor. I was pleased to have remembered to take the tokens out of the cash drawer of that shop—I had plenty even for a lunch and supper.
I sat in front eating and when he got behind the wheelstick, a bit hot and sweaty, he went into a new tirade about starving. I told him gently that the sweetbun and hot jolt were all gone and even tipped the canister to show him it was empty, but it didn’t help. He actually picked a newssheet off the floor and threw it at me, excusing it with the remark, “I been all through it and can’t find a (bleep) thing you were doing! You weren’t working last night, you were loafing! It was you that had the night off, not me!”
I calmly directed him to fly to the Widow Tayl’s in the Pausch Hills suburb and sat there reading the Morning Oh! No! the dawn newssheet favored by the riffraff. How wrong he was: I had made the front page!
SORROWING SUPPLY
COLONEL SUICIDES
EX-WIFE IN HYSTERICS
OF LAUGHTER
Late last night, according to informed sources in the Domestic Police, Colonel Rajabah Stinkins, Supply, Voltar Raiders, took the last firm act to end his tragic life. At eighteen thousand feet over the Great Desert, he blew up himself, his driver and his aircar with a megavolt blastick.
His ex-wife has been hospitalized after hours of uncontrollable laughter. Associates at the Ground Forces Play Club say that even the last-minute intervention of firm and lifelong friends failed.
The Voltar Raiders will bury what can be found with military courtesy on Saturday. The public is invited to the feast.
Colonel Stinkins is survived by five lovely children, the older two of whom could not be reached as they are in reform school.
It was followed by a service record biography that seemed to make it clear he had spent a long life at a desk. I looked further. Ah, here was the next:
FIRE RAVAGES INDUSTRIAL CITY
Last night, a wall of all-devouring flame tore through the night-shrouded electronics district. Fifteen people are missing, mostly watchmen.
Half a square mile of charred and smoking ruins marked, at dawn, what had once been thirty-one thriving businesses.
Fire Department authorities state they have positively isolated the cause to an electrical short in the Jimbo Electronics Toys Plant.
Competitors jubilant. . . .
Way down the list of firms consumed by flames was The Eyes and Ears of Voltar. Nothing about Spurk. Probably had him confused with a watchman. I went on through the paper. Ah, another one:
STOLEN CAR FALLS ON HOSPITAL
Last night, a vehicle identified as stolen crashed out of the midnight skies to land on the Hospital of Good Mercy.
The superintendent, Dr. Muff Chuff, who was not there at the time, said that damage was minimal, confined to the poor children’s ward. As the roof collapsed, there is no body count as we go to press. “We were going to abandon that wing anyway,” the Superintendent said. “We need more money and have too few doctors. Application for more building funds is being made
. . . .”
I wandered on through the pages. And then, there it was, a small item:
APPARATUS OFFICER
RUN OVER IN MIDAIR
The body of Officer Raza Torr of the Coordinated Information Apparatus was discovered in the small hours of the morning on the banks of the River Wiel. It was discovered by a passing garbage scow.
Police Traffic Investigator Roauf Roauf informed this reporter that evidence clearly showed Torr had been struck by a passing airbus and had fallen ten thousand feet.
I smiled. Leave it to the exacting press to get everything right!
We flew through the beautiful morning and were soon putting down at the Widow Tayl’s. And I was so pleased I just sat there gazing toward the swimming bath. What a warm glow it gave me to bring so much happiness to this world.
There sat Dr. Prahd Bittlestiffender at the poolside. He was dressed in a robe several sizes too small for him. He had at least fifteen empty canisters lying about his reclining chair. On his lap he had a huge platter of sweetbuns he was wolfing—one bun, one bite.
Lying on her belly in the grass was the Widow Tayl. She had her robe skirt up around her shoulders and was naked from there on down. She had her chin cupped in her palms. She was gazing with rapt adoration at the doctor.
What a scene of post-carnal bliss! Truly, I felt like a benefactor of the whole race. The waves emanating from the Widow Tayl to Prahd almost shimmered in the morning sun.
Belatedly they noticed that an airbus had landed with a blast, ten seconds before, that had almost blown the leaves off the trees.
I got out. They looked in my direction.
But what was this? The Widow Tayl had patches of bandage on her face and the whole upper part of her torso was swathed in post-operation tape! Had they had a fight? Then I realized that Prahd must be set up and in business already. Practicing, maybe. Getting his hand in. Removing her warts and tightening her sagging breasts.
He came gangling halfway over to meet me. He was still chomping on a bun and wiping his hand on the robe.
“I am Officer Gris,” I told him, in a very low voice. I pulled my identoplate from my pocket and showed him. I looked stealthily to the right and left. I said, “You arrived okay?”
He was looking at me oddly.
“Is everything all right?” I said. “Did Zanco deliver the shipment?”
He nodded. But he said, “You sound just like Professor Gyrant Slahb!”
Ah, well, we have a penetrative intellect here, I thought. But they train you splendidly in the Apparatus.
I smiled, “Well, I should hope so! He is my great-uncle on my mother’s side!”
Instant awe! Instant adoration!
“He’s a wonderful man,” said Prahd.
“He certainly is,” I agreed heartily. “Now, to business. Are you set up for the test case?”
He loped ahead of me and we went into the hospital. A side room was piled with empty cases, big and small. The main invalid room had been all pushed about and a big portable operating table was centered. Lights were ready to beam down. Racks of knives were ready to probe. Spin drills were ready to spin. Culture flasks were ready to culture. Heaters and flame were ready to burn Hells out of everything in sight. What a layout!
“I see you’ve used the table already,” I said.
He blushed faintly and, yes, I noticed there were a couple telltale spots on it.
“No, no, I mean the Widow Tayl.”
He blushed harder and started to look hangdog.
“No, no, no!” I said. “I mean her operations.”
“Oh, that,” he said, instantly relieved. “The poor woman. Warts are so easy to handle. And there’s no reason for her breasts to sag. By introducing a muscle-cord catalyst to the mammora fermosa . . .” What a dedicated cellologist!
I forestalled lecture 205. “It’s all right. I know you had to see if the equipment works.”
“Oh,” he said, glowing, “her equipment really works!” He shook his head in wonder. “But there are several more things I can do to her. . . .”
I’ll bet you will do them, I said to myself. Standing on one’s head in the swimming bath or trying it in a tree might be novel. “The test case!” I said firmly.
He was all attention.
“You realize it is very secret and your presence here more secret still. I am here today to see if you are set up and to bring you more equipment.”
“Good lords,” he said, “I have more equipment here now than we had in the whole hospital!”
“We will install one set of these in the test case,” I said. “I want you to study the directions and get all set up. There must be no slip-up. Your future, I hate to have to remind you, depends on this first test case. My grandfather. . .”
“You mean your great-uncle, don’t you?”
“My grandfather was a cellologist,” I corrected quickly. “I have heard him say that the first case tells the tale. And although my great-uncle was very impressed with your record, it is I,” I said very firmly, “that you must please. One leak of your presence here, one slip of the knife in this test operation and . . .” I made the gesture of goodbye.
That scared him. “Oh . . . I . . . I . . . I will obey you, Officer Gris. I will . . . will d . . . d . . . d . . .”
I went to the door. I bawled, “Driver! Bring in those boxes.”
I found an additional storage space. My driver, Ske, muttering under his breath, began to make trip after trip, lugging in the cartons and filling the spare room. The one marked with an X was early and I opened it and got out the directions and the hearing and sight buttons, one set. I put them down on a table. I briefed him in detail and then concluded, “You study these. They will go into the test case.”
He said he would. And although I tried to dissuade him that the rest were of no interest, he kept pawing around the other cartons. I didn’t know or care what was in them, really.
“These aren’t all cellological,” he said.
“They have relevant applications,” I said learnedly, although how you could treat a long-distance, miniature, pocket, electronic, automatic sound-aiming rifle sight as cellological I wouldn’t know.
Ske finally finished and went grumpily back to the car. Young Dr. Bittlestiffender suddenly turned from his examination of cases. “There’s blood on these boxes!”
Ah, me. Apparatus training has to be good, the demands made on it. I said, “Horrors!”
I rushed madly out to the car. Ske was just sitting down in it, very sweaty and cross.
“Let me see your hands!” I demanded.
He was willing to do that. And sure enough, the boxes of gold had gouged the flesh a trifle here and there. But not enough to bleed.
I held the hand firmly.
“Aha,” I said. “Steel slivers!”
I shot the Knife Section knife out of my sleeve. I stabbed him in the palm!
He screeched!
I grabbed the other hand before he could get away. I stabbed it!
He screeched again.
I vanished the Knife Section knife up my sleeve.
Young Dr. Bittlestiffender was coming across the lawn behind me.
“The poor fellow,” I said. “I’ve got the steel slivers out now. Perhaps you better bandage his hands. He is not used to rough work.”
The blood was dripping. “I could have done that much less painfully,” said young Dr. Bittlestiffender.
“Sometimes stern measures are required,” I said.
Ske looked at me with blazing eyes. And then the pain got to him and he gripped his palms together to ease it.
Young Dr. Bittlestiffender looked at me with new respect. He led the whimpering Ske off across to the hospital.
A voice at my elbow. “They will be a moment. I want to talk to you. Could you come into the main house? There’s nobody else here.” It was the Widow Tayl.
I should have known better. She led me into a gorgeous morning room, all white and gold. The slanted sun wa
s pouring in on a glistening, white rug.
Her slippered foot was hooked behind my boot as I tried to back up.
The jar of my hitting the rug made a grinning cupid rock upon its pedestal. Pratia was saying, “I just can’t thank you enough for bringing him here.”
My hat flew out the open window as she crooned, “We had the most wonderful day yesterday.”
I got a glimpse of a manservant sweeping in the hall, a smirk on his face, as Pratia prattled. “And Prahd and I had the most wonderful night.”