“Well, well,” said Jettero Heller calmly. “The drunks arrive at last.” It was the Fleet’s contemptuous name for the Apparatus: our insignia was supposed to be a club, a fat paddle with a handle upside down. But the Fleet chooses to believe it is a bottle. Therefore, they call us “drunks,” and this infuriates the Apparatus.
Lombar ordinarily would have struck out with an insult. And I did see his eyes flash for a brief instant. But Lombar had other things to do. He stood at the bottom of the ledge, bent over. He managed a cheerful smile.
“So far, so good,” said Lombar.
Heller just lay there, looking at him coldly.
“This has been,” said Lombar, “the beginning of a test.”
Heller said nothing. He just looked at Lombar. It made one very uncomfortable. Too calm.
“It is necessary to see if you are up to passing standards,” said Lombar, smiling. “You may find it uncomfortable, but we find it vital to pretest candidates for important jobs.”
The gall of him, I thought. But it was a clever approach.
“Now, Soltan here,” said Lombar, with a gesture toward me, “is going to complete the tests and we will know if you have the qualifications.”
With that, he had the nerve to actually pat Heller on the ankle. For an instant, having seen Heller use his feet, I thought it might be a foolhardy thing to do. And then I saw that the ankles were electric cuffed to the stone.
With a reassuring smile, Lombar left the cage. He beckoned to me and, when we were out of earshot, said, “The rest is up to you. Invent something mild, tell him he passed and then give him this.”
Lombar took from his pocket an official copy of the Grand Council order that authorized Mission Earth. He handed it to me. The place smelled horrible, the light was ghastly; the realization that he was dumping this on me and more, leaving me alone with Heller in the depths of Spiteos, made me feel very ill.
The Chief Executive of the Apparatus now began to revert to type. He didn’t seize my lapels or hit me with the stinger. But he put his face very close to mine and his voice was deadly. “Do not arouse his suspicions! Do not let him escape!”
Oh, fine! Two contrary orders in one breath! The real order would be to somehow accomplish the impossible and get Heller’s cooperation. But Lombar was gone.
I went back into the cage. My Gods, the place stank. I tried to smile as I knelt beside the ledge. Heller was just looking at me calmly, too calmly.
“First,” I said, “could you tell me how you spotted that the orderly was a fake?”
He didn’t answer. He just coolly looked at me. He must have been half dead from hunger and thirst. The electric cuffs on his wrists and ankles must have been very painful.
“Come, come,” I said, feeling like an idiot schoolmaster, “it is to your advantage to answer my questions. Then we will see if you have passed and things can be much more comfortable.”
For a while he just continued to look at me. Then, with his words a trifle thick from the swelling of the tongue that goes along with thirst, he said, “From your accent, you’re an Academy officer, aren’t you?” He shook his head a little. “What sad route brought you to the drunks?”
An unaccountable surge of rage hit me. Who was the prisoner here? Or wait, was he trying to forge and exploit a bond? Was he being arrogant and disdainful like Fleet officers do in the face of defeat?
My hand gripped the blastick hard enough to crush it. How dare he pity me?
My wits had been dispersed in all directions. This fellow was dangerous even to talk to. I carefully calmed myself. Indeed, who was the prisoner here? I looked at him very carefully and what I finally saw amazed me. He really wasn’t thinking about himself. He wasn’t thinking about the pain of electric cuffs or hunger or thirst. He actually felt sad that another being could fall as low as I. His question had nothing to do with himself at all! Only me.
I could have talked about myself. I could have said, “Sometimes one follows the wrong chart.” I could have laid it all out for him and come to an honest understanding. How different it all might have been had I done so.
But there was Lombar like a black cloud in my sky. I wasn’t courageous enough to be honest. In that moment I sealed the doom of an awful lot of people. A complete coward, I put a false smile on it. I repeated, “Come, come. Just tell me about the orderly.”
He was silent for a bit. Then he said, “Why should I? You’ll just improve your techniques on the next kidnapping.”
“No, no,” I said. “This is just a test of perceptions and reactions. Purely scholastic.”
He shrugged. “When I came out the door and caught a whiff of him, I knew he was no Fleet orderly. In the close confines of a spaceship, a crew has been known to kill someone who never bathes or who uses scented powder. There are no smelly Fleet orderlies.”
I had gotten out a notebook and was making silly notes to add to the illusion. “Very good. Keen sense of smell. Anything else?”
He looked at me, faintly amused. “His belt was upside down, he had his spats on backwards and there was the bulge of a forbidden knife at the back of his neck.”
“Ah, excellent,” I said, pretending to write. And indeed it was excellent. I hadn’t seen the knife bulge.
“But,” said Jettero, “I flunked smelling the ozone that always comes from an electric whip even out of use and I did not hear your boss close the door behind me. So I flunk. I am not the fellow for your job.”
“No, no, no,” I said hastily. “That’s for me to judge. Now let’s get on with this. Why did you let that other player win?” I really wanted to know. It had puzzled me ever since I had seen it.
He looked at me as though wondering what sort of a monster I was. He didn’t answer, so I said, “Why did you throw the game away?”
In a very patient voice, the way one explains something to a child, he said, “His sweetheart was in the stands. She had come clear from his home planet to watch him play. If he had lost, it would have shamed him in front of her.”
“Oh, wait,” I said. “You tossed him some balls. You were mocking him. That was far worse than just defeating him.”
“That is true,” said Heller. “So I had no choice except to distract attention from him by stepping outside my ring and losing the game. If you were watching, you saw it work. He kept his pride and was not shamed.”
I was astonished. I felt upset. Anyone in the Apparatus could tell you that it is utterly fatal not to win every time and in every place. Compassion is a fatal word! The dirtier one played, the better. And always to win, no matter what the cost to anyone.
This fellow would never make a spy. Never! Lords help him! And lords help me as his handler!
“Great!” I cried, feeling as false as a prostitute. “You’ve passed with all tubes blasting! You’re the very fellow for the job!”
PART TWO
Chapter 3
The light of the wire cage was bad, the stink was overpowering. I produced the copy of the order and with a flourish of fluttering seals, held it in front of his face.
“The Grand Council, no less,” I said. “One of the most important missions of the year! And as you can see, it has been entrusted to the Exterior Division with complete autonomy and discretion.” I made the paper snap importantly.
As he made no response, I summoned up the brightest voice I could in that horrible place and said, “We had to have the best in Voltar and we have chosen you!”
If this quickened any ambition in him, it was not detectable.
“I think,” he said, “that you had better get me my watch.”
I had no idea why a watch had anything to do with it. I had to get a guard anyway to get the electric cuffs off. So I went to a wall installation and hit the buzzer.
After a while, a wrinkled cripple showed up and looked at me uncertainly. “Remove the electric cuffs from this prisoner,” I ordered. “And bring some food and water. Also, bring back his possessions.”
Muttering that
he had to get the circuit combinations, the sorry excuse for a guard limped off.
We waited and after a while the wreck came back with a metal card, a water jug and some filthy-looking meal in a rusty can. I stood back, alert, while the cripple fumbled around with the card and finally removed the wrist and ankle cuffs. He put the food and water down on the filthy floor and limped off.
“Wait,” I said. “Where are the prisoner’s possessions?”
The guard just drew further off, saying in an annoyed whine, “I’m off duty now. You’ll have to buzz for the next guard.”
Heller was sitting up. He was cautiously sipping at the water jug, not taking too much, letting the swelling of his tongue go down. I buzzed again, cross that the first guard wouldn’t even tell the next one the message.
After a lapse of half an hour or more and several buzzes sent, a huge, overbearing Calabarian came into the room. “What’s all the row here?” he demanded angrily. “Buzz, buzz, buzz! Nobody can rest!”
I had backed up, blastick ready. This fellow weighed at least three hundred pounds and his naked torso was a mass of knife scars. He had a face from a nightmare.
“Get this prisoner’s possessions. A sweater, a pair of shoes and a watch.” I turned to Heller and he nodded that that was all.
“And what service are you?” demanded the huge guard. “How do I know who you are? You ain’t wearing no Apparatus uniform!”
“I’ll make it worth your while,” I said, acutely aware of being a mile deep and at the mercy of these thugs.
The monster seemed to nod as though that was what he had been waiting to hear. He disappeared.
Heller diffidently ate a little bit of the food. He washed it down with another swallow of water.
I twitched the Grand Council order in my hand. “This is a great opportunity,” I said coaxingly.
Heller shook his head. “Wait.”
After a long time the big guard came back. He had a new, shallow cut under one eye. He threw the shoes on the floor in front of Heller and slapped the sweater, now very filthy, at Heller’s face. “He wasn’t wearing no watch when he came in,” he said.
I looked at Heller. “You wouldn’t be wearing a watch in a game of bullet ball,” I said.
“A friend was holding it,” said Jettero. “He gave it back when I left the floor. These apes took it.”
“Get his watch,” I told the guard. “No watch, no pay.”
He snarled to himself and went off again.
The water and food were helping. Jettero stood up and I was very alert, gripping the blastick. But he just exercised his limbs a bit. Then he sat down and used a sleeve of the sweater and some of the water to sponge out the shoes: somebody else had been wearing them, they were filthy.
After a long time the huge guard came back. He had a new bruise on the side of his mouth and his knuckles were skinned. But he was holding the watch.
I had never seen a space engineer’s watch before. I took it to make sure it contained no trick weapons: life in the Apparatus makes one suspicious. But it was just a big, round dial with a small hole in its face and a heavy metal band. I handed it over to Jettero. He nodded that this was it and began to put it on.
“The pay,” said the guard.
I took a ten-credit note from my pocket, a pretty big sum for a guard in Spiteos.
The guard looked at it like it had kicked him. “Ten!” he snarled. “I had to pay sixty credits to redeem that watch!”
He made a lunge at Jettero to grab it back.
I snatched at the monster’s shoulder to spin him off course. It flung him backwards and he reared up and tripped on his own feet. He hit the side of the wire cage and went down on his knees.
He was absolutely frothing!
“I’ll murder you!” he screamed, starting to lunge.
I raised the blastick to kill him.
Abruptly, my blastick went spinning!
There was a blur. Heller’s right wrist caught the guard across the throat with a strike that lifted him clean off the floor!
The monster hit the wall with a thud!
He crumpled down like a disjointed doll. He was bleeding from the mouth, out cold.
Jettero picked up the blastick, put its safety catch on and handed it to me. “Never kill a fellow when you don’t have to,” he said quietly.
He inspected the guard. “He’s still alive. Give me seventy credits.” And he held out his hand to me.
Numbly, I fished out sixty more credits and added the ten from the floor. Jettero took them from me. Kneeling by the guard, he tapped the cheeks until the fellow started to come around.
Jettero held the seventy credits in front of the monster. “Here’s your money. Thank you for the watch.” And then it was the cold, not-to-be-disputed voice of a Fleet officer, unmistakable. “Now return to your post and that’s the end of it.”
The guard heard it. He took the money and walked off as quietly as though he had just looked in for a casual call. Indeed, that was the end of it.
“Now let’s look at that alleged document,” said Heller.
PART TWO
Chapter 4
Jettero Heller took the Grand Council order over to the green glowplate. His back was slightly to me and I couldn’t quite see what he was doing. It must have something to do with his watch.
“It seems authentic enough,” he said.
I kept a mild smile on my face but I shuddered inside. It did happen to be authentic but only by comparing it to the listings on the planetary file circuit could one really know. The Apparatus could forge documents like that in minutes. He was absolutely hopeless as a spy.
“But it was issued 4.7 days after I was kidnapped,” he said.
I peered at the document again, over his shoulder. Yes, it was hour dated. No great trick. “We had to know we could get the right special agent before we dared undertake the task,” I lied smoothly.
“Look,” said Heller. “This place is pretty awful. Can’t we go somewhere else to discuss this?”
“As soon as you’ve decided to undertake it,” I said.
“Ah. Do I smell blackmail amongst all these other stinks?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “It is just that some . . . ah . . . forces don’t want the mission to succeed.” That was no lie. “So I am charged with keeping you safe.” Pretty brilliant of me, I thought. He wasn’t going to be hard to handle. An utter child where espionage was concerned.
“Blito-P3. I just came from there. Surveyed the place.”
“Precisely,” I said, “and with all your other accomplishments that was why you were the exact and only officer for the job.”
“So you kidnapped me.” The wry smile showed he thought the whole thing fishy. “Maybe you better tell me about this so-called mission.”
So I told him, keeping it very simple. He was to go to Earth and infiltrate some technology into their culture and preserve the planet. The way I put it, it sounded quite noble and altruistic. A Fleet officer would never know about Invasion Timetables so I omitted that.
“And you considered the best way to begin this was to stage a kidnapping?” said Heller.
“We had to test you to see if you could stand up to the demands of being an agent,” I reminded him.
“So you got the order before you knew I had passed.”
(Bleep)! He could think! But so could I at this game. You don’t live a decade around undercover work without learning the tricks. You don’t and stay alive, that is.
“We would have been put to the extreme trouble of finding another volunteer,” I said blandly.
“And the trouble of kidnapping him,” added Heller. Then he put up his hand to stop the interchange. “I’ll tell you what I will do. I am not part of your Division. If you can obtain the usual orders from the Fleet Personnel Officer, I will undertake your mission.”
The specter of Lombar moved a bit away from me. I wanted to laugh with relief. But I said, “Oh, I think we can manage that all right.
”
With a sweeping bow and hand flourish, I indicated he could precede me through the door.
I had to sign the prisoner out in the lower guardroom and as we entered, the monster Heller had struck down was sitting with the rest, eating some loathsome stew. I was nervous in this place and when the beast made a sudden movement, I flinched back. And then I saw something astonishing.
The huge guard stood up so swiftly he almost knocked over his food pan. He came to rigid attention and crossed his arms on his chest in the formal military salute!
Invaders Plan, The: Mission Earth Volume 1 Page 7
