Mission Earth 6: Death Quest

by L. Ron Hubbard

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  L. RON HUBBARD

  on you while you rest up. I'm used to that, you see, and I don't mind a bit, really. And then when your back gets rested, we can do it the right way again. And then you can rest while I——"

  "Get OUT of here!" I wailed.

  "I'm going," she said. "I keep my bargains. But don't forget the number." And she pve it to me again. "In case you change your mind. Good-bye, now, although it is a shame with us alone in the house not to use the rest of the afternoon ..."

  I got my hands over my ears.

  She picked up her coat and put it on. She went out the back door and climbed the garden fence. She waved from the top. And at last I was left to my fuddled misery.

  How often in life does one go through the first tremors of a catastrophe and never realize that they were but the unheeded warning? Ah, but if only one could change the fleeting moments of a yesteryear. How different would life be. I should have killed her when I had the chance!

  Chapter 3

  The following morning, I had twice the head I had had the day before.

  The reason was not hard to isolate. Preparing me for the proper execution of my duties, Adora had unfortunately heeded my plea that I must have something to drink. My throat had been dry as dust itself. She had found the bhong set up.

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  "You've been at the Acapulco Gold," she said. "That is what is making you so thirsty." She had come in with a full tumbler of beautifully cold liquid. It looked like water. I had drunk it gratefully, gulp, gulp, gulp.

  VODKA!

  The effect was almost instant. I not only had no headache, I had no head. It had blown off!

  Consequently, I have no slightest recollection of what had gone on that evening. If there were two lesbians who had then become ex-lesbians, I could not tell you to this day. Since, when I woke, I had no bruises on me nor daggers sticking in me and no one was arresting me for bigamy, I could only assume that I had performed.

  I felt so bad that even my loss of memory did not disturb me.

  I pottered about in the midmorning empty apartment. I got an aspirin. I went out into the garden and gazed with distaste at the sunlit day. I went back in and glanced at the viewers.

  Crobe was busy giving electric shocks and the emotion digitals in his viewer kept flashing

  SATISFACTION

  every time a patient was carted away, sheet over his face, en route to the morgue. Normal Earth psychiatric duties. One never would have suspected that he was an extraterrestrial. Not very educational. I turned it off after a while.

  Krak's viewer was completely blank, so I was not disturbed at all. This evidence showed to me she must be miles and miles away, even the North Pole, perhaps.

  Heller's was a view of the sea. He was leaning on a

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  rail, puffing. "Wow," he said, "the lady was right. I've gotten out of condition."

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mr. Haggarty. Anyone who can run up to the top of the mainmast and down ten times without stopping can't be said to be in serious shape." It was a gravelly voice and Heller looked sideways. The man had a broken nose and the words Spans Director were on his T-shirt. "I think you've achieved a remarkably fast recovery from those multiple injuries. CIA agents are seldom so resilient."

  Heller swept a hand toward the sea. "Where are we, anyway?"

  "See those high, towering clouds? Shaped like castles? Now look at the water. See the little scraps of seaweed? And look at its color: indigo blue. We're in the Gulf Stream. That's what makes the weather feel so balmy."

  "How long a swim to get ashore?" said Heller. •

  The sports director laughed. "You'd have to swim awfully fast to beat the tropical sharks. You're not going anywhere, Mr. Haggarty. The next item on your schedule today is a hundred laps in the sun pool. It's just been refilled with warm Gulf Stream water. So let's go."

  I pondered this. The Gulf Stream. The yacht must be somewhere in the Caribbean. How did it get down there so quickly? No yacht is that fast. The problem made my head ache worse.

  Totally oblivious that I had all the evidence of absolute catastrophe around me, I went back to bed.

  Some hours later, I was apparently having a nightmare. There was a mighty roll of drums and then a rhythmic beat. The whine and yowl of electric guitars shrieked and dripped with sex. A chorale beat at me:

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  Do it in the morning.

  Do it in the night.

  Do it to me, baby

  And do it right.

  Do it in the water.

  Do it in the clouds.

  Do it long and tenderly

  And make me proud.

  Do it, do it, do it!

  And do it once again.

  Write a day of ecstasy

  With your lovely pen.

  Do it, do it, do it!

  Don't be shy!

  Do it, do it, do it!

  And gaze up at the sky.

  For this must be heaven,

  You can hear the angels cry,

  "Do it, do it, do it!"

  So open up your fly!

  What strange music for a nightmare! It must be a nightmare, for everything was black. But it was accompanied by a moist, delightful sensation. I lay there. The music had stopped but the sensation continued. Then the same piece started up again and the sensation mounted. Was the music the sensation?

  Suddenly I realized there was something on me. It was moving to the beat of the music!

  Hey, this was too real for a nightmare even if everything WAS black.

  I ripped at my eyes. There was something on my eyes!

  I tore it off.

  TEENIE!

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  She was sitting astride me!

  She stopped rocking back and forth and looked at me with her big eyes. "Now you've spoiled it," she said.

  "Spoiled what?" I raved, trying to get her off of me.

  She sat there, not budging an inch. "I was keeping our bargain. You said you never wanted to see me again, so I covered up your eyes. Now you've taken it off and broken our agreement."

  "How did you get in here?" I raved.

  "You left the back door open," she said. "And don't scold. I am NOT playing hooky. I went straight out yesterday and enrolled in the Hong Kong whore's school. I'm doing it night school and days. I got A plus on my first lessons and now I am doing my homework."

  "Get off me and get out of here!" I grated.

  She clung firmly astride. "I learned some nice things. I never knew you could do so many things with muscles inside and outside. And I knew you would be fascinated at the rapid progress your protege was making. Feel this."

  She sat perfectly still, apparently, but inside her there was a gentle stroking feeling.

  "That's just one internal muscle moving," she said. "It's the yummy-yum muscle. All the muscles have names. If I set another one opposite it going, you would (bleepulate) and we don't want that so quick. So, pretty good for a street urchin, huh? I can see that you liked it. Right now I'm holding you in the 'whoa-boy' position that prevents a 'too-soon.' Oh, I feel I'm getting somewhere, now. Even my parents will be proud of me."

  "Hey, I thought your parents were dead."

  "Oh, no. They are doing life in a maximum-security Federal pen. They engineered a presidential-assassination attempt that failed and when they went to prison I

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  was made a ward of the court. But the judge wouldn't appoint a guardian: he kept me in his chambers so I could handle him with oral testimony and relax him in the middle of difficult cases."

  I stared at her. This was an entirely different story of her life than she had told me yesterday. What was I dealing with in this female monster?

  "You get out of here," I said, "you broke your bargain!"

  "No. You broke it. You're the one who
took the cover off your eyes. Don't blame others for your own misdeeds."

  "Teenie," I said, "you get off of me, put your clothes back on and get the Hells out of here. And take your (bleeped) Chinese positions and muscles with you!"

  "This one, too?" she said.

  My hand clutched the side of the bed. Then it began to relax. My fingers straightened out stiffly, quivering.

  An errant bee wandered in from the garden, buzzed in circles round and round at the window.

  A potted plant began to spin.

  The buzz of the bee went up and down in volume.

  "This is 'rickshaw boy, chop, chop,'" said Teenie in a strained voice.

  The potted plant swung faster. "Now I'll let you!" Teenie cried.

  The potted plant exploded.

  The bee soared off into the sky but it wasn't its buzz I was hearing. It was the expiring croon of Teenie. She raised her eyes to me triumphantly. "Oh, boy," she said, "now I think even you will agree that I will amount to something when I'm fully educated."

  I didn't push her off. I felt too weak.

  After a little, she said, "Now kiss me." As her mouth

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  was on mine, I couldn't avoid it. She raised her head a bit. "No, not like that! Here's a proper kiss. Open your mouth slightly, put it in the Q position. Now take your tongue..."

  I groaned as a second potted plant began to spin. Then a third one started to turn. Then a fourth one began to rotate.

  The second exploded. The third exploded. The fourth exploded.

  I conked out, unconscious.

  A long time later, a voice said, "For God's sake! It's five o'clock! And you're still in bed!" It was Adora.

  I looked around wildly. The effort made my head feel like it was being hit with an axe. No Teenie. I was -all alone in bed.

  "Where is she?" I babbled.

  "She's in the other room," said Adora. "Both of them are. One is a blonde, the other a brunette, and they're hot as a forest fire to find out what real sex is. This is no time for you to be having wet dreams when the quarry is in the front room. So tallyho. Let's get after the tail!"

  "I can't," I said. "I'm totally exhausted and my head is killing me."

  "Oh, that again!" said Adora. She went to a table, stuffed and lit the bhong. I searched in vain within me to find energy to object. She came back and put the stem in my mouth. "You want to fool with a bhong, then stop fooling with it. By the numbers, six big inhales. One ... hold it, hold it, hold it. Exhale. Two ..."

  We got through the six. Everything had gone gray and soft. I was floating. Memory was starting to fade. So was the instinct to survive.

  "You seem to have developed a taste for music," said

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  Adora. "Good sign. I'll go out and play the record you left on the stereo."

  Presently here it came, booming through the room-Do it, do it, do it!

  Adora was there again. She had a pill and a glass. She put the pill in my mouth. I could not object, given the deadly and determined look on her face. "That's Benzedrine," she said. "An ordinary upper. Well, don't just lie there holding it in your mouth, you idiot. The capsule will melt and the stuff is bitter. Chase it down with this."

  The pill was bitter. I gulped the liquid convulsively.

  GIN!

  A tumbler full of raw gin! And I had it down before I found out!

  I was gasping painfully from the assault on my throat. Then flame exploded in my stomach.

  Adora's eyes held that deadly gleam. She said, "Now get out of that bed and go into the front room. And do it, do it, do it!"

  I have no memory at all of that evening. She had said they were a blonde and brunette but they might as well have been horses for all I knew of it.

  About 3:00 A.M., it must have been, I heard a deadly voice. "For Christ's sake, stop screaming!" It was Adora. She was standing beside the couch where I now slept in the back room. She was a bit tousled from having been asleep.

  "They're after me," I told her.

  "Who's after you now?"

  "The Fates," I babbled. "They're standing all around the corners of the room with pills and bhongs in their hands."

  "Oh, you're just seeing multiple. It's me, standing

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  here, trying to give you a sleeping pill. Quit spouting nonsense and take it."

  I took it but Adora Bey nee Pinch was wrong. The Fates were after me, as I shortly was going to find out! With shock!

  That very afternoon, I had missed my second opportunity to kill Teenie. And the horror of it is, I didn't even realize it until much later—fatally MUCH later.

  And right then, had I had my wits about me, I might have seen another Fate face grinning at me ghoulishly.

  I didn't even think of Freud and his unerring analysis of dreams. Frankly, I will be candid, that omission was the only mistake I ever made in my entire professional career. Oh, I could weep tears of blood as I recall it now. One should never desert his Gods as I deserted Freud that night. Even two minutes spent on dream analysis would have told me of horrors to come that even now I have difficulty facing.

  Chapter 4

  Adora awakened me by the simple expedient of kicking me in the stomach. It was morning. I evidently had fallen out of bed. She was standing there, dressed for work.

  "Listen, you (bleep)," she said, "you're sleeping too much. Get up and around and stir yourself. Go for a walk. Get some air. A hell of a looking husband you are. You're developing prison pallor. Are you listening?"

  "Yes," I said apprehensively, watching her feet at the

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  level of my face. My head felt like a balloon and I was afraid she'd kick it and burst it.

  "I woke you up to give you some good news," she said. "A compulsory attendance staff meeting has been called at Octopus. It's a lecture on abortion with a live demonstration by some new star of the psychiatric world, Dr. Crobe. He's just another (bleeping) quack like they all are, but I know it will go on half the night with Rocke-center drooling. Did you know the (bleepard) fired poor Teenie?"

  I was watching her feet carefully.

  "The rotten ape was giving a personal staff inspection the way he does every month and he spotted she was full of semen. He had her kicked clear down the stairs."

  Something was awry. "That isn't what she said."

  "Has Teenie been here?"

  "She was on the phone," I lied quickly. There might be something wrong with telling the truth and it's always safer to prevaricate in such moments.

  "Well, the Chief of Security was my source and he was right there. He may be a (bleep) but he doesn't lie. The poor kid is so uneducated she didn't even know enough to take a douche after she was here. So there went my plans. But never mind, I'll find other uses for her. Anyway, that's beside the point. One of the girls last night said you looked like a warmed-over corpse. So get out and around and get some air. Then maybe tomorrow night you can put on a better show."

  She left and I was very glad to no longer have feet with a kick impulse in them near my head. Belatedly, the corpse remark struck me. Was somebody intending to make me into a corpse?

  I was sort of confused. Maybe I had better look at the viewers.

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  Crobe was busy preparing lecture notes and knives. Heller was just then taking a look all around the horizon from some high place. Nothing in sight—not even a ship. Lords, he must be a long way away.

  Krak's was blank.

  I felt sort of fixated on the viewers. There was something wrong here. It eluded me. I concentrated very hard. If Heller was far away and still on the viewer and Krak wasn't on the viewer, then Krak had to be further away.... I sort of gave it up. Something was odd.

  A bright voice almost made me jump out of my wits. "Those morning programs don't have any good rock groups on them. And you have to ge
t the soap operas in the afternoon to get good sex. So why are you watching TV at this time of day? God, do YOU need education!"

  Teenie.

  "How the Hells did you get in here?"

  "I took your key yesterday. I had it copied. Here's yours back. I'm on my way to school. I can't stay long."

  "Good! You wore the hell out of me yesterday."

  "Really trained, hey?" she said, grinning like a ghoul. "Shows you what education can do. I'm so glad you liked it. But the reason I stopped by was to tell you I can't be here this afternoon."

  "Wonderful. I hope you're leaving for China for a ten-year postgraduate course!"

  "No, no. The crash course is not that long. It's only a couple weeks. That's why I have to put in extra time this afternoon. I have an appointment for a special rundown on hygiene and disease control. Special demonstrations."

  I flinched. "Disease?" I had specters of suddenly coming down with all kinds of oriental germs. "Look," I said anxiously, "yesterday, before you were here, you

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  hadn't just done it with a bunch of Chinese men, had you?"

  She gave her ponytail a sad tug. "That is what is so frustrating. It's not the old Chinese method. It's the new, scientific Chinese system. They use probes and meters. They set a probe to register just one muscle and put it in you. It's hooked up to a big scope and you watch the scope. Then you have to learn to locate that muscle yourself and when you do, it shows up on the scope. It's like learning to wiggle your ears. Once you find the muscle yourself, you can move it. You get so you can locate and independently move each muscle at will." She sighed. "But there are absolutely dozens of different muscles. It's pretty tedious, sorting them all out with nothing in you but a probe. But look."

  Before I could stop her, she opened her coat and pulled her skirt up above her flat, thin belly. She had a single muscle in her stomach moving. "I had a (bleep) of a time finding that one." She sat down and fanned her legs apart and pointed to the inside of her thigh. "But the nerve-impulse exercises are the worst. See the tape mark? They put an electrode on you, one place at a time. It's joined up to a big scope, too. And you learn to send an energy impulse at that exact point and if you master it, it shows up on the scope. You have to get so you can send energy surges through about fifty different places and THEN learn how to block them. After that, it gets a bit more interesting. You have to be able to do it yourself on another body."