The officer and the lady sauntered down the wide palace steps. Followed by the violin music, they strolled along a path. They entered one of the many secluded nooks. Each one, Madison knew, had a softly padded bench. He could just see the end of one through the flowering trees.
A begging babble reached his ears.
Presently, as he expected, he saw the woman’s gown being laid gently on the bench end.
The musician was now behind a tree, his back to the nook, but the violin music played on.
In the limbs above, a branch of blossoms began to weave.
The musician’s face was watchful, intent. He was playing faster now.
Blossoms exploded and the petals showered down.
The music now was mild and slow.
An attendant in silver livery who bore a silver tray sped across the terrace. He entered the nook.
Shortly the gray-blue smoke of marijuana rose.
The violin music played on.
Madison looked down at the terrace. Another publisher’s wife had come out. She was masked, but Madison knew her husband published the Daily Conservative.
Another officer came out of the palace. He stopped, he bowed, he approached. He whispered something in her ear and she handed him a flower.
They sauntered down another path.
Another musician followed them.
The pair entered another nook.
From the palace now came a third officer. He strolled to the first nook. Madison faintly heard his voice, “I say, old man, may I cut in?”
Above the second nook a branch of blossoms was going in a circle.
The second musician, back to it, played faster and faster.
The branch of blossoms erupted in a blast of petals.
The second musician smiled and began to play dreamily.
The attendant with the silver tray approached the second nook at speed.
Out from the palace came a third publisher’s wife.
The violin music played on. And Madison knew it would play on for the rest of the day. And other violins would play for the twenty other wives who would be sporting in these gardens this afternoon—after sporting in their bedrooms the entire night before!
Aside from marijuana, any LSD trips they had now were totally full of handsome young officers!
Madison stole a peek at the clipping book he was carrying. The first batches of women were long since returned home. Just to test his muscle he was getting psychiatry good coverage. Page after page contained news stories about the marvelous cures it was effecting, how magnificent Crobe was, how misguided any other form of treatment was and how all rival ideas should be crushed out. Life had become impossible for publishers and editors unless they ran columns and columns about this marvelous new science imported from Blito-P3!
Oh, there was no doubt of it that psychiatry had all the answers. They had won press domination on Earth the very same way: get the wives of the publishers and editors on the couch and being liberally (bleeped) and you got all the column inches you could ever want! And woe betide any competitor in the field: he would be slaughtered!
A voice behind him jarred into his mood. “What the hell have you become? Some god (bleeped) voyeur?”
PART SEVENTY-NINE
Chapter 2
It was Teenie and she looked very cross. Her air-limousine must have landed in the back near his, for he hadn’t heard it. She was drawing off a pair of black gloves and two maids were hastily attending her. This was her upper dressing antechamber.
“Oh, Teenie,” said Madison, “you have done so well. Organizing this place and training the officers as you have was a superhuman feat. And look: here are the first fruits of victory!”
He shoved the clipping book under her nose. She shook off a maid who was trying to comb out her hair and reorder the ponytail and took the book.
She looked at it. “I don’t see anything here about Gris.”
“No, no. This just shows the dawning of press control. Right now they’re just bragging about psychiatry. Isn’t it marvelous? Some of this is front page! It’s never been done before in the history of Voltar! Influencing their press.”
“Listen, buster, I’m helping you for just one reason. You’ll forget that to your sorrow! I want that Gris spread-eagled on the block down there and hours and hours every day filled with his screams. I’ve thought of things way beyond anything dreamed up by Pinch. And all the way here from Palace City today, I’ve been thinking up new ones! Oh, I’m MAD!”
“Teenie,” said Madison anxiously, well aware it could be himself, not Gris, on the block down there, “what has happened?”
“The (bleepard) has ruined Too-Too’s life, that’s what.”
“Too-Too? How?”
“That (bleepard) Gris just reached out and smashed him!”
“WHAT? Has Gris escaped?”
“No such luck, for maybe then I could trail him down and capture him. He’s still in that stinking Royal prison hiding out from us. And (bleep) all you’ve done to get him out and into that dungeon. I’ll let Too-Too tell you—if he can talk.”
She turned and gave a signal and a guard rushed off. Teenie took an agitated tour of the ornate dressing antechamber. She looked like an angry and frustrated menace to Madison.
There was a clatter at the door and two white-coated men brought in a stretcher. One of Teenie’s maids from Palace City was beside it: she was sponging at the forehead of its burden.
Too-Too lay with ashen face, seemingly a corpse. The men laid the stretcher down upon a sofa and the maid swabbed anxiously at the unconscious visage.
Teenie brushed the maid aside. She bent down and stroked Too-Too’s pretty face. The makeup was already smeared. Too-Too did not respond.
Teenie turned to Madison. “I brought him with me in the hopes the quiet here would help. And I also wanted you to hear what a (bleepard) that Gris is. I’m going to have to use mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” She snapped her fingers and a footman raced in with a silver tray. Teenie took a joint out of a silver box and lit it. She then knelt by Too-Too. She took a puff from it and then laid her lips on Too-Too’s and blew.
Too-Too began to cough on the smoke. Teenie took another puff and, steadying him, pried his lips apart with her tongue and blew.
Too-Too went into a spasm. He had sat up. He saw Teenie and put his arm around her and began to cry.
Teenie held him off and made him puff the joint. This time he inhaled deeply and then the smoke blubbered out amongst his coughs and sobs.
Teenie made him do it again. He became calmer.
“Oh, Teenie, dear Teenie,” Too-Too said, “my life has come to an end. Hold me close, dear Teenie, so that I can perish in your arms.”
“Hush, dear Too-Too, you’ll live many a day to be (bleeped) by many men yet. We’re going to get that (bleepard) Gris. I’ll even show you the dungeon where he’ll be tortured. Now tell this man here what you told me so he’ll get off his (bleep) and begin working like he meant it!”
“It’s too painful,” said Too-Too. And Teenie had to get him to puff the joint again.
Too-Too, in a broken voice, began to talk. Gris had forced him and Oh Dear into being couriers and informers by a mechanism known as magic mail. Every three months, by mailing a card through a certain slot, an order continued to be held. But for some reason the Blixo’s schedule had been advanced and although Too-Too had mailed the last card he had been given on Earth punctually, as he thought, it had been late.
The order which had been held had already gone. The commander of the Knife Section on Mistin had received it. Due to internal Confederacy delays between planets, Too-Too had only now been informed.
HIS MOTHER HAD BEEN MURDERED!
Screaming it out, he went back into a collapse and Teenie had to work hard to revive him. After more mouth-to-mouth marijuana resuscitation, she said, “Now, Too-Too, start from the beginning and begin to spill all the crimes you know that Gris has committed.”
Ma
dison listened. This catamite knew quite a bit. It was all headline stuff. Actually, Madison had not been too interested in Gris, regarding him just as a way to get to Heller. But as he listened he began to get fascinated. This was juicy copy!
Finally he said, “You say he gave you orders to kill old Bawtch and two others in your office. Won’t that implicate you?”
“Oh, no!” cried Too-Too. “I couldn’t murder anybody. I simply told Lombar Hisst. We just transferred Bawtch to another section. That was when Hisst began to set Gris up.”
“For what?” said Madison.
But Too-Too had spent what little energy he had and was collapsed again in Teenie’s arms.
“Now you’ve heard it,” Teenie said, her eyes smoldering as she looked at Madison over Too-Too’s head. “Don’t let any grass grow under your feet. GET THAT GRIS!”
Madison grinned. With material like this, how could he miss? It would open the door to Heller with a crash.
PART SEVENTY-NINE
Chapter 3
Four hours later Madison, in a hurtling Model 99, was hot on the trail. He had been very intrigued by the information that Gris had been “set up.” He also knew from recent past experience that the media here had a nasty idea that one should have documents and proof for stories. While this was far from insurmountable—one could always forge and find false witnesses—it might save him time if he could get his hands on the real thing and, thanks to Too-Too, he was certain that, somewhere, a lot of evidence existed.
He had been cautioned by Lombar’s chief clerk not to barge in all the time on Lombar Hisst, so the logical target in this case was the old chief clerk himself. The man would be, he thought, at Spiteos or the palace.
Madison, having crossed the green seas and now with the mainland under him, was still trying on the communications system to locate his quarry.
Suddenly into his calling, a harsh voice broke in: “Divert! Divert! This is Apparatus Traffic Surveillance. J. Walter Madison, divert from your course at once and proceed to the Office of the Chief of Apparatus, Government City, without delay.”
“Oh, boy,” said Flick, overhearing it, “you’re in trouble.”
“Why is he in trouble?” said Cun who had bullied herself back into her job, Relax Island or no Relax Island.
“It means they been looking for him,” said Flick to Cun. “It means they were calling earlier and it means you was out of the airbus instead of standing by its phone. I bet you got yourself (bleeped)!”
“I did not!” said Cun savagely. “I was just peeking.”
“I’ll bet you were,” said Flick. “How come the front of your uniform is wet?”
“I was getting a drink of water. It was you that was getting all hot. And over a scullery maid, too!”
“Peace!” said Madison. “Head for Government City. Do you know where his in-town office is?”
“You can’t miss it,” said Flick. “Upper end of the town, on the cliff above the River Wiel. You can always tell it from the dead bodies in the streets around it.”
“I hope you’re joking,” said Madison.
“Well, yes, actually I am,” said Flick. “He has a chute so he can dump them into the River Wiel.”
They sped across the green countryside and soon were over the masses of tall buildings which housed the bulk of the government. The vast area at the upper end skirted tall cliffs which fell into the River Wiel. This section was the oldest and most decayed part of Government City, and the Apparatus, while not the oldest, was certainly the most decayed part of the government and had fallen heir to it.
There was a square, occupied by a central building which was surrounded by broken pavement and monuments to forgotten glory. All of this would seem to indicate that the Apparatus was also old but this was not true: the service was really quite young as things in Voltar go. It was only that the other parts of the government would no longer live in this place where the fountains no longer ran and the statues were missing heads and legs.
As the Model 99 swept in to land, there was immediate trouble to find a parking place. Wide as the surrounding pavements were, they were covered with randomly parked tanks and vehicles.
Flick squeezed in between a personnel carrier and a flight command car, each of which bore a general’s guidon. Cun opened the door while ogling some of the drivers.
“There’s something going on here,” said Flick. “These are the vehicles of the Apparatus General Staff! You watch it, Chief. They’re the most vicious (bleepards) in the Confederacy!”
Madison got out. He felt a little conspicuous in his gray business suit. He made his way through clusters of officers and men in mustard uniforms, black uniforms, green uniforms, every one of them badged with the Apparatus symbol which, if you looked at it from a certain angle, did resemble a bottle.
An overly dressed young woman with a snug on a leash was sauntering in front of the main door. Another one, considerably underdressed and with a hard face, was impatiently twirling a cane. The latter accosted Madison, “How much longer is this silly meeting going to go on?” she said.
“I have no idea, madam,” said Madison.
“Well, if you’re going in there, you just tell General Buc that his mistress has been waiting for five (bleeping) hours. I’m fed up!”
Madison went up the broken steps. Two sentries in mustard barred his way. An officer bawled at him, “Madison? Where the blast have you been? Get the hells in there and fast!”
Madison found himself being propelled across a cluttered lobby and then down a flight of stairs. The officer thrust him into a crowded room.
The place looked more like a cave than an office. It also stank.
Generals in red uniforms were sitting in chairs around the rough rock walls. In the recorded strips of this meeting they look just like Manco devils.
Lombar Hisst was sitting behind a desk, also uniformed in red. He was turned sideways, watching a staff officer with a remote control in his hand who was electronically chasing an orange arrow around on a projected map.
“This is Omaha,” the staff officer said. “According to earlier intelligence advices, it is a sort of military nerve center. Estimates are that it will take a million men, after it is occupied, to hold the position and fan out eastward.”
“A million men!” commented a general. “That means no supplementary reserve.”
“Well, if we are denied the right to simply bomb New York . . .”
“That has to be denied,” said Hisst. “It would obliterate the installations that must be seized in operational condition in New Jersey. That requires a solely infantry approach, moving through cities on a slaughter basis. Are you afraid of casualties?” he asked the first general with a sneer.
“No,” said the first general. “I was simply hoping that some way the Army could be coerced into participation. We only have about four million troops. When distribution to other continents is examined . . .”
“We could simply concentrate on the United States,” said another general.
“No, no, no,” said a general with artillery badges. “There are more than twelve nations that are nuclear armed, according to reports. Failure to make this an infantry action on all continents could result in some hysterical nuclear involvement. If the objectives of the chief are to be attained, we have to prevent their use of hydrogen bombs from one country to another across oceans. I think you would find the objective areas totally contaminated and unusable.”
An aide bent over Lombar, “Your Excellency, the Earthman has finally arrived.”
All eyes swiveled to Madison. (To do him justice, he might not have understood completely that what was under discussion was an invasion of Earth, for the meeting transcripts do not, of course, give internal thoughts of those speaking. Madison’s own logs shed no light on this.)
The general of artillery was the one who spoke. “What is the range and thermal penetration potential of an MX3 missile?”
Madison said, “I’m sorry. I don’t
have it at my fingertips. But I don’t think it’s much to be worried about. The full project was, if I recall, challenged by the General Accounting Office because of cost overruns and was suspended. I remember reading about it.”
“Ha!” said the artillery general. “Good man. So that’s a system we don’t have to worry about. Now what about the satellite killers? Those could be used against spaceships.”