And who could have predicted that Heller would go out of his way to save the life of that miserable wretch, Izzy Epstein? Not only is Epstein an anarchist but he has the audacity to dislike the IRS! If that is not enough, Heller gives Epstein a hundred thousand dollars and hires him on as some sort of corporate advisor.
Does any of Heller's behavior make sense? He came to Blito-P3 to handle planetary pollution, not diplomats, whores, Mafia, FBI and the IRS!
The only person who saw through Heller was Miss Simmons. Dear, wonderful Miss Simmons. When Heller enrolled at Empire University and said he wanted to major in nuclear science, she locked her anti-nuclear-war sights on him. Her determination to flunk Heller out of school gave me boundless joy. She scheduled Heller's classes at the same day and hour so he couldn't possibly attend them all.
Typical of Heller, he cheated to get around it. He hired Bang-Bang, an ex-marine explosives expert for the Corleones, to stand in at his college military class. Then, operating from a "command post" on the campus, Bang-Bang "mined" Heller's classes with tape recorders so Heller could later simply speed-listen to the lectures. Diabolical!
I would have been happy to have Heller killed right there and then and be done with it. But typical of his cheating ways, he sabotaged that idea. Heller was sending reports back to Royal Astrographer Tars Roke and using a platen code. Until I got that platen and was able to forge Heller's reports to make it appear that everything was OK, I couldn't kill him. That just goes to show how underhanded he really is!
I had to get that platen. I ordered Raht and Terb, two Apparatus agents who work out of our New York office, to report to me in Afyon. I would have them get that platen and then I could kill Heller and get on to more important business like the arrival of Utanc, the authentic Turkish dancing girl I had bought.
I also had a new hospital built in Afyon to introduce a little technology myself. The Voltarian cellologist I had brought, Prahd Bittlestiffender, could give gangsters a new face and fingerprints. At a hundred thousand a head, it was certainly a more profitable enterprise than cleaning up the atmosphere.
As Raht and Terb were about to arrive and Heller's days were numbered, I decided to check in on him. I pulled up the viewscreen and turned it on.
Chapter 1
At first, I thought Heller and that ex-marine Bang-Bang were simply engaging in their novel way of going to college.
Their "command post" at Empire University seemed to be the reference room of High Library. Heller had apparently mastered the card catalogue system and the computers as well—they were very elementary computers. He was going through card files. He was going a bit too fast for me to follow on the viewer, so I didn't know what he was looking for and I supposed he would be, faithful to his promises to Babe Corleone, pursuing his course of study.
Bang-Bang was sitting next to Heller, reading something. Every now and then, he would make a pistol out of his fingers and fire it, saying "Bang" in a whisper out of deference to his surroundings. Sometimes he said "Bang, bang!"
Heller got curious so I also found out. Bang-Bang was reading a comic book and I was startled to find they had a whole file of them in the reference section. I didn't see Bugs Bunny, though, so I lost interest.
Heller now had a whole pile of books. They were a set, beautifully bound: Hakluyt's Voiages and, in smaller old-time print, The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation... (1589). He proceeded to demolish them at a much greater than usual pace as though he was looking for something. His progress was very jerky.
I used a still frame to see what items were catching his eyes. They were odd. They could not possibly have related to anything he was studying in college. ".. and so we did suffere the loses of fifteen men who did go ashore on the coste." And "... ye natives attkt us soare and we did lose the boatswain...." Such things as that.
Bang-Bang leaned over and whispered, "You asked me what I was reading. All right, what are you reading?"
"I'm reading that anybody who tries to land around here gets the Hells attacked out of him by the natives," said Heller.
"True," said Bang-Bang and went back to his comic books.
Heller seemed to be looking at something else, though. And once more, I still-framed to see what it was. ".. and ye natives saide that these theier golden necklaces did come from a mine three leagues into the forreste...." And ".. vaste stores of minerales weere saide to be upon the highlands by ye Cape...." And ".. so we journied up the rivere in smalle boates and there we founde the seaman of another shippe they thought had been eaten and we rejoiced to finde him but he woulde not come away afore he finished digging out the mine of gold he said laye up the rivere...."
There were an awful lot of different "voiages" to North America and Heller just kept plugging away reading stuff of men so long dead even their bones were gone. But he does crazy things. You can't tell what he'll get up to next. Impossible to predict him. But I had to try. My own life may have depended upon outguessing him. I wondered if it was cannibalism he was going to practice. Or maybe some scheme of kidnapping Miss Simmons, his Nature Appreciation teacher and number one barrier to getting his sheepskin, out of the hospital and setting her adrift in a small boat.
At length, Heller said, "You got the command post?" And when Bang-Bang nodded, "I'm going to do a reconnaissance. Be back in a few hours."
Heller turned in his books.
He went out and found the bulletin boards. He was looking for something. A student was there putting up a sign:
UFO PROTEST MEETING
"What's a 'UFO'?" said Heller.
"Unidentified Flying Object," said the student. "Flying saucers. Extraterrestrials."
"You protesting them?" said Heller in an alert voice.
"No, no. We're protesting the way the government keeps the sightings secret."
"You've sighted some?" asked Heller.
"There have been thirty thousand sightings to date," said the student.
"They ought to be more careful," said Heller.
"You're (bleeping)* right they should," said the student. "If the government don't quit sitting on what they know, we'll have a protest march, New York Tactical Police Force or no New York Tactical Police Force. You better come to this meeting—it's in about three weeks. Down with the Establishment!"
* The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, are all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: "Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound '(bleep)'. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves."
—Translator
"I'll be there," said Heller.
He went on groping through notices. Finally he found a fresh one.
Nature Appreciation 101
This class has been transferred for this semester to
Instructor Wouldlice. The schedule remains the same.
That was what he was looking for. He went to a phone kiosk and looked in the yellow pages so quick, I didn't get it. Then he went trotting off to the Empire Subway Station.
He was playing hooky!
He caught a train and went roaring downtown and presently was clickety-clacking into an elevator of a big building. It dawned on me that he was wearing another pair of baseball spikes! The elevator mirror showed he was in tennis flannels with his red baseball cap on the back of his head. I had learned what that cap meant: he thought he must be working.
&nb
sp; He stopped before a door marked Geological Survey and United States Government. Then he went in.
A clerk was behind a counter. "I'm looking for gold mines," said Heller.
"Who isn't?" said the clerk.
"I'm studying gold mines along the New England coast," said Heller.
"Oh, hell, you must be a fan of old Cap Duggan," said the clerk. "Cap!" The clerk pointed, "Go on in there and wake him up. He'll chew your ear for hours."
Heller went in. An old man was sorting charts.
Heller told him what he wanted. "Yeah," he said, "I wrote a book on colonial mines and minerals once. Nobody ever read it though. The publisher sent me a bill. Sit down."
Cap Duggan, being a government employee, was not pushed for time and he proceeded to tell Heller the story of his life. He was a surveyor, too old to push a transit anymore, and put out to grass pending retirement. Heller heard all about the Seven Cities of Cibola and lost mines and Indian fights, and they went out and Heller bought him a lunch and then heard all about Alaska and the Klondike and the days of '49. Aside from the fact that it was all about gold—which never fails to interest—I could not see how Custer's Last Stand really was caused by gold in the Black Hills. But Heller just sat there lapping it all up.
Three solid hours and a lunch and they got down to absolutely nothing!
Finally old Cap Duggan ran out of steam and decided to discuss the subject to hand. "These are what you are looking for, young fellow," he said as he managed to wrestle open a huge drawer. "They're photostats of charts that are in National Archives down in Washington."
They were bad copies of charts that must have been so old and stained in the first place that not even the originals could have been made out.
Cap Duggan spread some out. "They're colonial surveys. See here? This top one was done by George Washington himself. The scale is all perverted on most of them as the original charter companies was trying to convince the king they had less than they wanted, but you can make them out."
Heller was going over them with a microscopic eye. He found one marked Connecticut. "Hey," he said suddenly, "here's a creek named 'Goldmine'! Empties into the Atlantic. Right there—only twenty or thirty miles northeast from where we are right now!"
"So 'tis," said Cap Duggan. "Probably some local name."
"Can I see the current charts of that area?"
Cap Duggan got them. "Well, well," he said. "It's on the current chart, too. Look, there's even some mineral indicators. Oh, yeah. I know that place. Lost mine. Never found. I remember about forty years ago somebody that was adjusting boundaries around there. Probably never was a mine, just somebody's idea to attract colonists or something. Now look, way up to the northeast of there, almost in the middle of the state, there's a real mine—near Portland, Connecticut. The Strickland Quarry. Lot of rock hounds go there. There's also quarries at Roxbury, Branchville, East Hampton and Old Mystic right down on the coast. They dig gemstones, garnets and such like. Lot of stuff like that in Connecticut. Just drive up to Westchester and get on the New England Thruway—that's really U.S. 95—and have at it. Connecticut's awful pretty this time of year. I wished I wasn't stuck in this God (bleeped) office! Well, I'll be retired soon and they'll let me out of the cage."
Heller bought a stack of maps down to the tiniest sections. He also bought twenty copies of Cap Duggan's book—autographed! And really left the old man beaming.
When he left, he made one more stop. At a flower shop. He ordered that, every day, Miss Simmons was to get a bunch of beautiful flowers in the hospital.
He got back on the subway and very soon was sitting in High Library again. Bang-Bang came in from a tape-recorder pickup and planting, Heller's sneaky way to avoid attending classes.
"What's new?" said Heller.
"Nothing," said Bang-Bang. "Going to college is great." And he got back to reading his comic books.
But the day left me in a spin. Heller was now up to something else. I could feel it. I was really frustrated. I did not know where he was going to break out next. He was milling around. And I knew he was up to no good.
And then I really got upset. About midnight I went into my bedroom. There was a card lying on my pillow!
Nobody could have gotten into that room!
But there was the card!
The message was addressed to me in a scrawled hand:
SOLTAN GRIS: I WAS TOLD TO REMIND YOU FROM TIME TO TIME THAT SOMEBODY UNKNOWN TO YOU IS AROUND WITH ORDERS TO FINISH YOU OFF IF YOU MESS UP. HISST LEFT THE CHOICE UP TO THAT PERSON. A KNIFE? A GUN? AN AUTO ACCIDENT? MAYBE SOME POISON IN THE FOOD? YOU HAVEN'T GOT A CHOICE. EXCEPT NOT TO MESS UP. SO, GRIS, DON'T MESS UP.
And then a dagger drawn! The only signature!
Who was it? One of the Turkish help? Somebody in Afyon? Somebody on the base? Time after time I was certain I had it.
I didn't get any sleep.
Chapter 2
It was Tuesday at 4:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time.
Heller had had his usual day—going to college the hard way. He was sitting on the steps of High Library, dressed for a change in a beige lounge suit. He had been reading a secret manual from his Army ROTC class on how you blackmailed agents into blackmailing the general's wife to get the battle plans. The class bell rang somewhere. He put the manual aside, looked up and there was Izzy Epstein.
I was rather amazed to see Izzy appear. After Heller gave him ten thousand dollars to set up some corporation, I had been more or less certain that he would simply take Heller's money and vanish. But here he was. I knew at once that some deeper plot must be boiling in his cunning brain, some way to take Heller for even more money.
Epstein looked very apprehensive. He stood fumbling with the tattered briefcase, two steps below the level Heller was sitting on.
"Hello, Izzy," said Heller. "Have a seat."
"No, no. I should stand when in the presence of my superior."
"You're responsible for me, so what's this superior stuff?" said Heller.
"I am afraid you'll be cross with me. I deserve it."
"Sit down and tell me why," said Heller.
"I didn't get it all done. I knew the job would be too heavy for me."
"Well, I'm sure you got something done," said Heller.
"This and that," said Izzy. "But..." and then he sighed with relief, looking down the steps and to the opposite side. Bang-Bang was trotting up.
"Last charge recovered," said Bang-Bang. "We got no five o'clock class today."
"What's this?" said Izzy.
Heller told him about the recorders Bang-Bang had planted in the courserooms.
Izzy was shocked. "Oh," he said. "That must be very tiring. And dangerous, too! There will be quizzes and lab periods. It is really just a problem in business administration. For a small expenditure, I may be able to unburden your day a bit."
"Go ahead," said Heller.
"I'll do a time-motion efficiency study and let you know," said Izzy. "But here, I am wasting your valuable time right now." He opened his case, got out some papers and handed them to Bang-Bang. "If you will just sign these, it makes you a social-security, withholding-tax employee of the New York Amazing Investment Company. I understand you have to have something to show a parole officer tomorrow morning."
Bang-Bang signed, kneeling on the steps. Izzy made him keep some of the papers and took the rest. "I did get some odds and ends complete, Mr. Jet. I have not been entirely idle. Now, if you're at liberty and would care to indulge me, we should be going. I have to know if you think we are ready to receive your capital."
I knew it! He was only after Heller's remaining money. This decrepit, apologetic little shrimp in his Salvation Army Good Will Store clothes might be a real boon to me!
They followed him down to the subway station and boarded a downtown train. They switched at Times Square.
"Where we going?" Bang-Bang wanted to know.
"We have to have an address," said Izzy
. "I took the only one I could get on short notice."
They got off at 34th Street. They started up some steps.
"I do hope you approve," mourned Izzy.
They were in an elevator. It rocketed upwards.
"You see," said Izzy, "it was the only thing available at the bankruptcy court just now. This firm couldn't take the high New York taxes on corporations—didn't know how to get around them, I should say. They had distributed and marketed fancy office fittings and furnishings but the demand dropped. The three-year office lease and all their furnishings were sold by the court and I bought them. I hope you don't think it was exorbitant. I had to pay out two thousand dollars for it. And it's only half a floor."
Heller said, "Half a floor?"
"Yes. There's a clothing design firm and a sporting and athletic goods distributor and a foreign language school and a modeling agency. There are also about forty other firms. They have the other half. They wouldn't sell their leases but I think they will be good neighbors. We can probably do some business with them—fancy new clothes, athletic goods; we are multinational and can use some additional languages and the models that parade around are not in the way. If you don't think there's enough space, we can move."
They were now in a huge, gothic-arched, palatial-looking hallway. Space stretched away in all directions. A vast area.
Heller looked at the rounded cornices, inspected the quality of the colorful marble and sort of caressed an arch.
"It's a bit old, you know," Izzy said. "It was finished in 1931. But I hope you think it has something special about it."
"This stone work is beautiful!" said Heller. "Where are we? What is this place?"
Mission Earth 03 - The Enemy Within Page 2
