Mission Earth 03 - The Enemy Within

by The Enemy Within [lit]

  "In case somebody is listening," I said. Stupid fool, didn't he realize this was a national emergency?

  I didn't wait for his answer. He was no use. He'd gummed it all up by leaving the New York office un­manned. His fault!

  I fled back up the tunnel.

  I flew around in circles in my room.

  Karagoz was in the yard. I rushed out and asked him if Utanc was still alive.

  He tried to answer me but I couldn't wait. I raised my head and yelled, "It will all be handled!"

  Karagoz was looking at me very strangely. He said, "The waiter just took out her supper dishes and she was fine."

  "She wasn't writhing around the floor from poi­son?" I begged him.

  He looked at me and shook his head. Somewhat sadly, I thought. No help from him.

  I rushed back to my room.

  I couldn't think. I paced.

  Then I got smart. I got a bag of hand grenades out of my locker and went out in the patio. I sat down in a wicker chair. I would sit there all night and if I heard the slightest sound of anybody trying to sneak up on Utanc, I would let them have it.

  It was pretty cold as night wore on. The breath of coming winter was in the air.

  It cooled me.

  I also realized I couldn't sit there every night for months. It was too cold.

  I had just dozed when, in a flash, it came to me, to­tally and completely, how to stop Heller. An entire plan!

  A few minor details were missing but they could be filled in as I went along.

  I would go to New York, personally, myself.

  I would cook Heller's goose by recruiting the most powerful opponents possible.

  Wait!

  I did not dare leave Utanc here!

  I would take her with me!

  Another hour of shivering.

  I dozed off again.

  I woke up with a flash of inspiration!

  I knew exactly how I could make Utanc go with me.

  Dire emergencies can spawn some hefty ideas!

  Chapter 5

  With daylight and the staff about, there was less risk of an attack upon her. I lay down on the floor of my bed­room, keeping the door slightly cracked open so I could watch the patio and the further door into the yard.

  I had a long time to wait and I must have dozed. The sound of a car starting woke me.

  Utanc! As I supposed she would, her fear had worn off and she was going into town. By the sun, it must be around ten o'clock. Usually she was gone for about two hours.

  Now was the time!

  Those two (bleeping) little boys would be alone! And I was going to handle them once and for all.

  I knew they were dangerous. One of them might have a gun. This time, I wasn't underestimating them. I must not fail.

  In my earlier visit to Earth, I had bought a Colt .44 Magnum Single Action Peacemaker in a hock shop. It was a huge handgun, enough to break your wrist. I loaded it.

  I had also acquired a Mannlicher "Safari," over-and-under double-barrelled .458 caliber elephant rifle. Its bar­rels were so big that when you looked down them, you got the feeling you could fall through them without touching the sides. I loaded it.

  Melahat was in the yard cutting flowers. I walked up behind her and shoved the elephant-rifle muzzle under her chin. When I had brought her to, I hissed, "You're going to get that door open and get me into Utanc's room."

  She was white as paper. She wasn't moving, her eyes fixated on the muzzle. Crossed.

  "If you don't do it," I grated, "I will shoot the whole staff!"

  She rose to the occasion, if a little shakily. With me right beside her and the elephant gun close under her chin, after a couple tries she found her voice. She called out, "Boys! Utanc said when she left you were to have your present now to amuse you while she was gone." Silence.

  Then a tiny, piping voice. "What is it?" A jab of the elephant rifle. "Open the doors and see."

  Curiosity won the day. The sound of the inside bar sliding up. The lock being turned. The creak of hinges as the door opened a crack.

  CRASH! I was into that room like the New York Tac­tical Police Force!

  The boy at the door went tumbling like a ball across the room. The other was in bed, sitting up, his face cased in bandages. He began to scream!

  I kept the elephant rifle on the one on the floor. I pulled out the Colt .44 Magnum and trained it on the one in bed.

  "Stand up against that wall!" I ordered. "Put your feet well away from it. Put your palms flat against the wall!"

  They looked for help from Melahat. She was sprawled across the door in a dead faint.

  The two boys did as they were told, even though they were shaking and crying and one of them had de­veloped hiccups.

  I frisked them, keeping a foot ready to pull their feet from under them if they tried anything rough. They were clean. This wasn't odd as they were wearing only pants.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. So far so good.

  I looked around the room. Utanc had laid rugs on top of rugs decoratively. Musical instruments were on racks. She had a bunch of framed pictures.

  Keeping one eye on the little boys, I walked over to the pictures. They weren't real photographs. They were magazine cutouts she had framed in golden frames. Movie stars! Male movie stars! Actors from all down the years.

  Some books. I had often seen her bringing in books. Watchful that the boys didn't pull anything, I pawed over the volumes. Odds and ends. But a whole series of hard-cover volumes called The Illustrated Lives of Famous Stars.

  Suddenly my plans got even better.

  I turned on the boys. They were shivering and shak­ing. Both of them had hiccups now. Good. They'd co­operate. I brandished the Colt .44 Magnum. Then I cocked it.

  "Which one of these movie stars does she like best?"

  The one who wasn't vomiting stopped his hiccups long enough to say, in a thin scream, "Those two on the end!" He pointed, lost his balance and hit his head on the wall.

  I went over and looked. Sure enough, the two on the end were smeared with the lipstick of kisses!

  Rudolph Valentine and James Cagney!

  I went over and grabbed their well-thumbed copies of Illustrated Lives.

  Out of my pocket, I took a roll of two-inch-wide adhesive tape. I grabbed the wrists of the first boy and taped them together. I kicked his ankles together and taped them. I slapped adhesive tape across his mouth.

  I grabbed the second boy and did the same.

  I kicked Melahat to her feet. "Get me two blankets!"

  She tottered off and came back with them. I spread them on the floor. I dumped one boy per blanket. I picked up the corners and threw them over my shoulder, two bundles, not even squirming.

  "Melahat, you camel's dung," I said in a deadly voice. "You will clean up this room. When Utanc re­turns you will tell her the two boys' grandmothers are ill and calling for them and that they'll be gone for many days."

  She kept opening and closing her mouth, possibly try­ing to speak.

  "If you don't and if Utanc suspects or hears one word that I took the boys, I'll slaughter the whole staff!"

  She collapsed to the floor and started bumping her head against it. Aha, I didn't need hypnohelmets. All I needed was an elephant rifle!

  I stuck the Colt in my belt. I went out to the station wagon and dumped my bundles in the back.

  It had to work!

  Chapter 6

  I drove to the hospital. I threw the bundles over my shoulder. I went in by the secret entrance that led into the basement.

  On the intercom, I summoned Prahd.

  He came running down in some alarm. There was nobody housed in the basement yet.

  I had dumped the bundles on a table. "I've brought the first two criminals," I said.

  "Oh, wait!" said Prahd. "I'm not set up! Not down here. I've been working on a microorganism that uses the trachoma organism to spawn in. It then eats up the trachoma and becomes benign and furnishes the victim
with vitamins. It's also contagious. When I've finished that, I am going to get to work on TB."

  "This is more important!" I said sternly.

  "Oh. Well, there's my whole project on infant mor­tality. I think I can reduce it to zero!"

  Gods, this Prahd had no sense. Faht Bey would die if you dried up his source of birth certificates of dead babies. "Get your head screwed on," I told him.

  "Oh. Well, there's another project I have in outline. I think I can make all women have triplets. Isn't that important?"

  Gods, the government would go mad! They already had an oversupply of people who had to emigrate to get work! "You'll overstrain their food supply," I said brutally.

  "No, no, I thought of that! I sketched a design for a new intestinal organism that lets the body utilize 94 per­cent of its food intake. It will stretch the food supply way out. And also there's a way to fix their grain so its yield will quintuple!"

  "Prahd!" I said in a loud voice to jar him. "Grow up! This is Earth! The food suppliers would kill us if we did that! And the U.S. couldn't export its surplus grain! Their bigwigs make a fortune out of it! Be practical! Criminals are your best product!"

  He didn't look convinced. One blanket had begun to wiggle and he looked at it with alarm. He opened it up. Then he opened up the second. The two small boys looked at him above the tape gags, eyes terror-wide.

  "Be careful of them," I said. "They're vicious. Put them apart, in two cells. Keep them locked up and don't take your eyes off them. Their presence here is absolutely secret!"

  "But I don't have any jailers!"

  "You're good at hiring. Employ half a dozen deaf-mutes to man this place. Get it set up! Get a full cello-logical operating room going right where we're standing."

  "And then my pay starts," he said insinuatingly.

  "Prahd, if you do this job perfectly, we will give it very grave consideration."

  I handed him the two Illustrated Lives. "I want you to fix one of these boys so he looks like Rudolph Valen­tine and the other one so he looks like James Cagney!"

  "Wait," he said. "They're too young to put adult faces on."

  I compromised, "Make them so they look like they will grow up to look like those two men."

  He was opening the Illustrated Lives. It suddenly took his interest. "Ah, there are pictures here of how they looked when they were young."

  "Now you have it," I said.

  He was lifting bandages on the injured one. "You should have brought him here sooner. Somebody smashed him up."

  "Ran into a tree," I said.

  "Never mind," said Prahd. "The bone structure has to be altered anyway."

  "You can do it?"

  "Oh, yes. Means perhaps some gene alteration, some pigment reorganization. A bit extensive but nothing dif­ficult."

  "How long?" I demanded.

  "Until my pay starts?"

  "Until they are completed and healed up," I cor­rected.

  He considered very carefully. Then he said, "It will take until my pay starts."

  "Cellogically!" I thundered at him. "How long?"

  He rubbed his chin. He seemed to be making some calculations. "One week if my pay starts then."

  "One week!" I howled.

  "That's as fast as it can be done."

  I was being defeated. How could I hold the fort for a week? I would have to think of something. "All right. One week."

  "And my pay starts?"

  "You do a perfect job in one week and your pay will start!"

  "Ah," he said. He went over and picked up the two little boys. He put one in one maximum security cell and one in another. He began to rip the tape off the last one.

  I left.

  The shrieking hurt my ears.

  I somehow had to bridge this gap. One week delay!

  Something. I would think of something!

  Chapter 7

  My self-confidence, after so many cruel knocks, was returning. My id had been battered to a very low point of ego. The exact instant of resurgence had commenced with that inspiration about the little boys.

  My original idea had been to just get the boy patched up and restored to new condition. But this banal and unimaginative idea had stepped aside before the on­slaught of true inspiration. The moment I saw those photographs all smeared with lipstick, my true genius had asserted itself.

  What a present! One little boy looking like Rudolph Valentino, the other looking like James Cagney! Instead of flat, uninteresting, two-dimensional photographs, she could have these two to put on a shelf, the way you do with any other knickknack. One could admire them from time to time and keep them dusted and otherwise forget about them.

  How she would admire me! And now she would do what I said!

  The delay was, of course, a bit chancy. But with my id chasing my ego to new altitude records, this seemed child's play.

  I planned it with care. The unseen killer was some part of the base crew, that was for sure. Thus, I must get broad coverage so whoever it was would know I was busy.

  Wherever I was, I would raise my voice from time to time and shout how busy I was. But this could only go on for so long: my throat was getting hoarse.

  The next day, I awoke with a brilliant plan. I dressed and got a list of everyone at the base. I then proceeded to ferret out each one.

  The plot was to question them in such a way that each would realize how active I was and how dedicated to my job. I knew that people talk to one another and the word would get around. Thus, I could consume at least three days doing this.

  The action consisted of searchingly and lengthily questioning each person about poison. I did not intend to poison Heller—I did not have the platen—but it would show my heart was in the right place.

  From each I wanted to know everything they knew about poisons, particularly rare, violent and undetect­able ones. I didn't have to say who I was going to poison as the one with the mission of killing me—and now Utanc—would understand I was really taking my job ser­iously.

  Oddly, I didn't get too many answers. I got a lot of averted eyes and foot shuffling. And by the third day I was aware of quite a few strange looks coming my way.

  On the fourth day, I could no longer continue the project. Everyone in sight walked hurriedly off when I appeared. Also I began to suspect everything I ate or drank. But the project was serving its purpose. Utanc was still alive.

  When the fifth day came, I realized that if I didn't seem industrious, bad consequences could result. So I had another inspiration.

  I went into my secret room. Right at the lunch hour—so Faht Bey could not accuse me of interrupting vital work—I put my foot down upon the secret floor tile by the tunnel door and gave it the proper twist.

  Instantly, of course, alarm signals, silent in the office but awfully loud and bright everywhere else, clanged and flashed throughout the base.

  I gave them time. When I was quite sure everyone must have responded, I sauntered down the tunnel.

  They were all gathered in the center, crouched be­hind sandbags, gun muzzles sweeping nervously about. I almost got shot.

  I explained to them that this was just a drill. I told them that some very important things were going on else­where, that I had to take care of a "certain person" and that I would be away for several weeks.

  Instant cheering!

  Enormous volume! Some of it even hysterical! They waved their caps and cheered and cheered.

  I hadn't realized I was so popular. Quite touching, really. Brought tears to my eyes.

  Most important of all, I had bought time. I could now prepare to take care of Heller once and for all with­out being stabbed in the back.

  I sorted out passports. I chose one from the United Arab League. It would give me diplomatic status, pass through all my baggage uninspected and let me designate any entourage that I chose. As it required a trip to Istan­bul, which I made very speedily, it consumed two days. I was almost up to deadline and I would have to hurry.

 
; It occurred to me that I might need bugs. There were lots of bugs in the Spurk Eyes and Ears of Voltar stuff so I tore over to the hospital.

  Prahd was down in the basement and I didn't want to be plagued with nonsense talk about curing all the dis­eases in the world and wrecking the capitalistic system, so I tried to do the search myself. The store warehouses were not ready, the materials were still jamming the wards. I got keys and began. You never saw so many boxes piled in places where you couldn't get at other boxes.

  Although the Spurk stuff was undoubtedly there, I could only find one small box that was get-at-able without lifting things.

  In it there was a compact telescope. It seemed to be able to see through walls. Apparently, it used a distant solid wall as an extension of its front lens. By utilizing the space between molecules, it could get a picture and sound waves through a solid. One had to be at least a hun­dred feet away from the solid. Aha! The very thing! I could use this to look into Heller's suite! Interference or no interference! I knew there were roofs nearby. Here was a way to see what he did in his rooms and where he hid things! I took it.

  There was also a common bug in the box that picked up sound. It was the size of a speck of dust. Maybe I could plant it in Utanc's room. I took it.

  I was exhausted at the thought of lifting anything so I got out of there.

  Now, money.

  I have found that when one is travelling around, money is very necessary. If my plans worked out all right, it would be very necessary.

  I went to the radiation-marked boxes in the corner of my secret room. I had not really checked my gold. More lifting.

  Bar by bar, I lined it up. I got my thumbnail in­to each one, even my teeth. Nice and soft. Beautiful gold. Eighteen lovely fifty-pound bars of it! It lay there glowing.

  Suddenly, I could not bear to part with any of it! I would find other means of financing my trip! Reverently, I put it all away.

  I went down the tunnel to see Faht Bey. I explained to him how urgent the trip was and that it could and would be very expensive.

  Faht Bey sat there at his desk, holding his head in his hands. Try as I might, I couldn't shake him loose from any money. I did manage to get a mutter that the Lebanese was over at the hospital.