"A what?" said Lombar. "Is that some kind of an Earth race? Like Negroes?"
"No. He's white with brown hair. Oh, here's the rest of it. From cards in his wallet, it said he was employed by 'F. F. B. O.' and was retained to do Rockecenter work."
"Part of the Rockecenter organization!" cried Lombar. "Quick! Get that Earthman over here FAST!"
NOW things could begin moving!
Chapter 6
J. Walter Madison felt pretty giddy and strange. Here he was on some strange planet in a stainless steel room. It had been bad enough to sit in a detention cell at the base and realize he was a helpless prisoner. But immediately afterwards it had gotten far worse.
Every preconception he might have had about space travel and extraterrestrials had been shattered. He had boarded a flying saucer that didn't look like a saucer but simply like an old Earth freighter whose hull went all the way around it. The crew looked like Earth people with a subtle difference that this lot was shabbier than any crew he had ever seen or heard of. They talked a language which seemed composed of vowels and consonants completely alien to any Earth alphabet, but their gestures, pointings and nods were understandable.
When he had landed on a stormy shore with Gris from the yacht, he had begun to encounter little mysteries, but he had merely toyed with them as something amusing to occupy his mind. The shattering truth that he was in the hands of-what was the name they kept repeating? Voltarians? – hit him like a crash when they put him in a cabin, showed him how to strap himself into a gimbal bed, and then only minutes later he had looked out the port and seen Earth dwindling at such a rate below it was promptly as small as a billiard ball.
It was all so shocking that he didn't even have time to be afraid.
Then Teenie Whopper had walked in and said, "What a (bleeping) mess this is! Oh, wait until I get my hands on that (bleeped) Inkswitch!"
"TEENIE!" he had cried. "We're in outer space!"
"Where the hell did you think we were? On a Coney Island merry-go-round?"
"I don't understand it!" he had said.
"Oh, can it, Maddie. Don't be so God (bleeped) dumb. That (bleep) Inkswitch was an extraterrestrial named Soltan Gris. I always knew there was something nutty about him. His (bleep) and (bleeps) were a lot too big for any human, and I'm an expert. We been shanghaied!" She had been pretty mad and had stamped out.
It had all left him pretty blue. He sat down in a gimbal chair and gloomed and gloomed. He thought about his mother and despaired of ever being able to sleep with her again. She was so nice.
A fellow whose name he had made out to be "Captain Bolz" had come to see him after a day of this. Finding he spoke no Turkish, Bolz had used a tourist phrase book, cross-translating from Turkish to English, to tell him that he had better learn to eat the food as that was all there was, asked him if he played blackjack and did he want to buy a bottle of real, genuine counterfeit Scotch. Madison had been too depressed to respond very much and Bolz had stood there, scratching his hairy chest and looking at him, and had finally left.
He hadn't seen Bolz again for three more days of gloom. And then the captain came to him with a question. It was pretty hard to converse through that phrase book. But he made out that Bolz wanted to know if he had any influence over Teenie Whopper.
Madison had been so puzzled that Bolz had finally led him down a passageway and opened a room door, gesturing in with an expressive hand.
There, face down on the bed, was a pretty-looking boy. He had makeup on his face. A beatific smile was on his lips. A crew member was standing there, getting back into his clothes. The man leered at Captain Bolz and, buckling his belt, swaggered out.
The boy licked his lips and smiled a vacant smile. He had just lain there, ignoring them.
Teenie had abruptly issued into the passageway from the next cabin. She was counting a sheaf of what appeared to be gold paper. Was it money?
She had seen him. "Hello, Maddie. How's tricks?" Without waiting for an answer, she went in, stuck a joint in the pretty boy's mouth and lit it.
"Teenie!" Madison had cried. "What are you doing?"
"What's it look like I'm doing? I'm trying to make some money we can spend when we land. Greenbacks won't be any good on Voltar. You want us to starve?"
"But what are you doing with that boy?"
"Oh, him? That's Twolah, nicknamed Too-Too. He's just about the most nympho catamite you ever did see. And when he's hopped up on marijuana he can take it all day and all night, too! He's a sponge! Kind of cute, too. You want a piece?"
Madison had recoiled in horror. "You mean you're selling him to this crew?"
"Of course. Five Voltarian credits a crack. I've made 150 credits already. My own worry is that this crew is going to run out of money. They say this voyage lasts six weeks. But they got some jewelry and things. And they can steal ship fittings."
"Listen, Teenie, this captain here is boiling mad. He came to get me to see if I could control you."
Teenie had looked at Bolz with a strange sort of smile. "Oh, he can't do anything about it. He's afraid the crew will mutiny if he interferes with this business. I made sure he believed that by throwing a knife at him in the dark. So now he's trying to get you to do the dirty work and stop me. He's a (bleep), Maddie. But don't give it a second thought."
At that moment another crewman had come in and, after a sneering look at Bolz, as though daring him to do something, had handed Teenie five credits. Then he began to take off his engineering coveralls.
Madison had opened his mouth to protest but Teenie had cut him off. "Unless you want to have to pay a credit for watching, get lost." And she had slammed the door in their faces.
Bolz had given up on him and Madison had gloomed in his cabin for another week. Then he had gotten curious and begun to wander through the ship.
He had guessed he was going toward the bridge when he had passed an open door.
There Teenie had sat. It was Captain Bolz's office! Teenie had had Captain Bolz's hat on the back of her head, her ponytail over her shoulder, and her hands had been busy with a ledger book.
"Hello, Maddie. You decided to come out of your hole?"
"What are you doing in Captain Bolz's office? He'll murder you!"
"Oh, no, he won't. Old Bolzy got upset with all the (bleeping) that was going on. He doesn't like boys but all the chatter from his crew got him so hard up he was busting his pants. But I handled it."
"You mean you're letting Captain Bolz-do-sleep with you?"
"Oh, hell no, Maddie. I got more sense than that. I just been going down on him once a day to keep him cooled off. I charge him ten credits and I'm just looking up to see how much money he's got. And look here, he's rolling in it."
"Are you going to rob him? He'll kill us!"
"No, no. No robbery, Maddie. How crude! I'm worth whatever the traffic will bear and I could show you if you'd ever let me. You could even– – "
"No, no!" Madison had said, aghast, horrified at doing something like that with a girl.
"You sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. You're trying to make me be unfaithful to my mother! I won't have that, Teenie. And don't do anything awful to Captain Bolz. We're at his complete mercy!"
Her laughter had been extravagant. "Bolzy? Look at all this dough, Maddie. See? These things are numbers. My problem is that I set my price too low and Bolzy, after he's had it done to him, can't (bleep) for another whole day, not even with what I learned from the Hong Kong whore."
She had looked dreamy, her too-big eyes fixed on the ceiling pipes, caressing her too-big lips with the end of a pen. Then she had laughed abruptly.
"I have it! I'll just begin to slip hash oil into his hot jolt. Man, I'll have him (bleeping) three times a day!"
Madison had retreated to his cabin, the vision of being on a spaceship out of control turning into nightmares in his dreams.
He had suffered through the rest of the trip, clinging precariously to his sanity.
; He had landed in a place of such strange architecture he could not accept it.
He had been talked at by men in odd uniforms.
In a room that seemed to be made of stainless steel, they had plopped a helmet on his head and then for six successive days he had thought that he must have some awful disease that had put him in a coma.
Just this morning he had awakened fully. He had found his baggage was there in the room with him. He had seen what might be a shower but couldn't figure out how to turn it on. He had then stood in front of what might be a nozzle and peered at it and it suddenly sprayed him! Very disconcerting!
Now there was a knock and he was soaking wet.
He went to the door intending to open it, but it opened.
A man was standing there in a black uniform. "You better get a move on," the man said. "The chief has just sent for you."
"The chief?"
"Lombar Hisst! Don't stand there gaping. If that's your baggage, get some clothes out and get dressed. And you better look pretty respectable. But don't delay. The message said it was very urgent. So put some throttle to it."
"Where am I?" said Madison.
"You're standing right there, idiot."
"No, no. I mean where is this place?"
"Well, the chief is at Palace City where he always is these days, and I've got your airbus standing by. So hurry."
"No, I mean where is this place I am in?"
"You're in the Training Center of the Extra-Voltarian Personnel Induction Unit, Coordinated Information Apparatus."
"Yes, but what sun or star or something?"
"Oh, sizzling comets, I knew I should have brought an induction escort with me. You mean you don't know where you are?"
"You get the idea," said Madison.
"This is the planet Voltar, capital of the Voltar Confederacy. You're thirteen miles south of Government City in an Apparatus compound. I am Captain Slash of the 43rd Death Battalion, Apparatus."
"What's going on?"
"Buckets, how would I know? Here." And he fished out something and gave it to Madison. "But don't spend any time on it. I tell you the chief is waiting! Hells, man, get DRESSED!"
Madison went back toward his baggage, head in a whirl.
Then it hit him suddenly. HE HAD BEEN SPEAKING VOLTARIAN!
He couldn't understand how that had come about.
He started to lay aside whatever it was the man had handed him. His eye caught at it.
A NEWSPAPER!
He read something about the storming of a mountain on Calabar where the Apparatus had lost a thousand troops to heavy fire from the rebel forces of Prince Mortiiy.
NEWSPAPERS! THEY HAD NEWSPAPERS HERE!
He suddenly felt more at home.
Then he was startled to realize he was reading it all with ease!
Had he forgotten English? He said, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." No, he could still speak English.
He looked at the paper again. It had headlines and news stories, just like a paper should. It was all kind of bland, with no appeal to a PR, but it was a real newspaper, titled The Daily Speaker.
Oh, this was great. It wasn't such a foreign world after all.
He opened up the sheet to an inner page. There were some pictures, three-dimensional, in color. He turned another sheet.
A small picture. Was it familiar?
YES!
JEROME TERRANCE WISTER!
No, this must be just coincidence rampant. What would a picture of him be doing in a Voltar paper? Madison knew that even he wasn't good enough to reach out into circulation like that!
He read the caption and story. It said:
HELLER WHEREABOUTS
UNKNOWN
Commenting yesterday on the general arrest warrant broadcast on Homeview, a Fleet spokesman said, "The Fleet has no knowledge of any general warrant for Jettero Heller. The famed combat engineer was last reported on mission and the Fleet has no knowledge of his whereabouts. It is probable that the rumored general warrant is just some clerical blunder on the part of the Apparatus which, it might be pointed out, never loses a chance to defame the Fleet. As a combat engineer, Royal Officer Heller is empowered to act on his own cognizance and report back when he believes his assignment finished. The Fleet has no slightest worry about Jettero Heller."
Madison stared at the picture.
There could be no mistake!
The photo was too lifelike!
Almost no men-and nobody he had seen amongst Voltarians-were as handsome as that! Nobody else he knew had ever worn such a devil-may-care expression.
IT WAS WISTER!
Captain Slash had gotten tired of waiting. "Blast it, Madison, GET DRESSED! The chief goes absolutely crazy when he doesn't get what he wants in a rush. And he wants you! NOW!"
Rushing now to get dressed, Madison was in a daze. Maybe he hadn't failed on Wister. A general warrant? Of course, that wasn't good enough. It was even being denied. And then a thrill went through him. Maybe God was giving him another chance! He must hurry over to see this powerful and frantic chief.
PART SEVENTY-TWO
Chapter 1
J. Walter Madison, dressed in a neat gray flannel suit and blue bow tie, walked out of the training barracks on the heels of Captain Slash of the 43rd Death Battalion.
They walked across a littered yard, old papers and dust blowing around. It was a sort of stockade but it had long rows of training rooms: Madison, not knowing he had been hypno-language-trained in the past week, was amazed to find he could read all the signs, even Check Out Here.
Captain Slash made him sign a book and then a receipt. A clerk handed him his wallet: his money was gone. When he tried to ask what had happened to it, they gave him an identoplate that said J. Walter Madison. PR Man. Coordinated Information Apparatus. When you pushed the back of it his picture flashed on it. When you pushed it a second time, his fingerprints showed up. They must have gotten these when he was in a coma. He pushed the back a third time and a legend flashed, Pay Status-No Pay-P. Oh dear, thought Madison, he was certainly off to a bad start! How on earth could he remedy that? He wasn't on Earth! Disaster! How would he eat?
Things promptly began to go from bad to worse. Captain Slash walked him over to a squat thing that was sitting in a flat circle. It had front and side windows but he couldn't see any wheels. However, it could only be a car, for it had a front seat and a back seat.
Slash opened the back door even though it didn't seem to have any handle. "This is your driver, Flick."
The driver, Flick, had a face like a squashed oval. He hadn't gotten out. He didn't look pleased. He was in a mustard-colored uniform and he might be a chauffeur but he looked more like a bandit, and a very scruffy bandit at that.
"Flick," said the captain, "deliver this fellow to the Royal Palace and make sure Lombar Hisst gets to see him. It's urgent." And he gave the driver the copy of an order.
"Wait," said Madison in alarm to Captain Slash. "Aren't you going to accompany me?"
"Why?" said the Apparatus officer. "You're rated 'harmless.'"
"Well, all right," said Madison, "but I apparently am not coming back here. I will need my baggage, particularly a portable typewriter to do my work with."
"Oh, is that what that funny machine is?" said Slash. "I wondered when I vetted your gear for weapons two days ago. Pretty clumsy. I think you'll find now that you can use both a pen and a vocoscriber. But quit worrying. Flick put it all in the back of the airbus while you were signing out. So good-bye and good fortune and don't ever get on my list in a professional capacity." He laughed. Then he turned to the driver and said, "Get a move on, Flick. The chief is chewing his short hairs off to see this guy."
Madison promptly got his second shock. He expected the car to roll along the ground. Instead, it leaped into the air like an express elevator. It scared him half to death. The thing couldn't possibly fly-it didn't have wings!
When he had swallowed his stomach, they were levelled out
and joining a traffic lane at a height of what must be ten thousand feet. A strange city, all swirls, lay over to his right, about the size of three New Yorks. "What town is that?" he asked the driver.
"The fancy name is Ardaucus," said Flick. "But everybody calls it Slum City. That's Government City ahead and to the north."
They turned to the southwest and flew over a range of mountains as high as the Rockies, and all before them lay a vast expanse of desert. Mile-high dancing dust devils were purple and tan in the sun, weird as a chorus line of crazy giants. Madison hoped they weren't live beings of some alien race that dined on airplanes that had no wings.
It started him worrying about this powerful being he was supposed to see. He would venture a question.
"Who is this chief I am supposed to see?"
Flick glanced back at him and then looked at the card he had been handed. "Apparently you're an Earth-man, whatever that is. And we're in the air so we can't be overheard. The chief's name is Lombar Hisst. Today he controls the Confederacy, all 110 planets of it. Confidentially, he's an egotistical (bleepard). Crazy as a gyro with a nick in the rim. You better watch your step if you're really going to see him. He bites off the arms and legs of babies just for kicks."
"Thank you," said Madison. But he thought to himself, sounds just like Rockecenter: bad image with the help and everything.
They were going at a frightening speed. A couple hundred miles of the awfullest desert he had ever seen had reeled off below. To crash in that would be fatal. And this driver seemed to be more interested in trying to light a strange cigarette with a lighter that threw a laser beam instead of a flame. The air was bumpy and he kept missing.
"Are you going to be my driver now?" he asked Flick.
"Unless the chief throws you into that thing," said Flick, pointing to their right.
On the horizon stood a huge black castle, fronted by a camp that must contain thousands of men.
"That's Spiteos. The camp is called Camp Endurance on the maps but the real name is Camp Kill. If the Apparatus gets unhappy with you, they send you there to be thrown into that chasm. It's a mile deep. You're in the Apparatus now. By the way, what was your crime?"
Mission: Earth Villainy Victorious Page 4
