Mission: Earth Fortune of Fear

by Ron L. Hubbard

"O-R-G-A-S-M," I spelled out for her. "Orgasm."

  "Crikes, what a beautiful word," said Candy. "I know why people take up Christianity now, if that is going to Heaven."

  "They lied to us," said Miss Pinch bitterly. "They simply told us that, to carry out Rockecenter's program to cut down the population of the world, we had to be lesbians. I was supposed to be the man-one and Candy was supposed to be my wife. We couldn't do anything else, as they've also turned all the males into gays and made it a crime to break up their marriages."

  She stood up suddenly. It made me very nervous. She looked around. She couldn't find anything portable to throw so she slammed the whole Iron Maiden over frontwards on the floor. "(Bleep) them!" she gritted. "They've made us underprivileged! They have been depriving us of women's rights for all these years! I'm going to get my revenge!"

  I was alarmed. "Wait a minute. This is treason," I said. "What about Rockecenter?"

  She spat! She picked up a beer can and slammed it down on the floor. "Rockecenter can go (bleep) himself!

  Psychiatric Birth Control! I spit on Psychiatric Birth Con­trol." She picked up another beer can and threw it down with a crash. "I spit on the Chief Psychiatrist! I spit on psychiatry! I spit on Rockecenter for promoting psychiatry! They've cost us years and years and years of a very beautiful thing!" She was looking around wildly for something else to throw down.

  I knew how to stop this barrage. It might come my way in a minute. It wasn't psychology, it was a sense of self-preservation. "You can't expect me to live here in the midst of all this mess-all this torture equipment. I'd have nightmares and walk out the door."

  "No, no," said Candy hurriedly.

  "No, no," said Miss Pinch in a sudden change of attitude. She dive-bombed straight down into propitiation. "Listen. We'll have it all moved out. We'll redecorate the place. You can have the back room. We'll have a lock put on the inside of the door. We'll have the garden cleaned up so you can have a nice view and sit and rest between times. You can come and go as you please. All you have to do is sleep with us in the front room every night and do it to us."

  "Not in that bed," I said firmly. "And no shackles or mustard."

  "We'll get a nice big bed to hold three," said Candy.

  "No shackles, no mustard," said Miss Pinch. "Oh, please don't be a hard-hearted (bleepard), Inkswitch dear. Please, please, pretty please, say yes."

  She looked like she was on the verge of honest tears. I said, "Yes."

  "Oh!" screamed Candy, "untie me quick so I can kiss you, you dear man!"

  I had trouble cutting her bonds off. Miss Pinch was hugging me and letting out little snarling sounds.

  Candy got loose finally and kissed me.

  Miss Pinch said, "You'll get your thousand bucks every day. And we'll fix up the place." Then she added, "And it's all settled?" as though she wanted to be reas­sured.

  "Yes," I said again.

  "Oh, goody!" cried Candy, clapping her hands. "Let's all get dressed and go to a restaurant and have a deflowering celebration."

  "No," said Miss Pinch, looking at me with a cocked head, compressed mouth and hungry eye, "Let's stay right here and do it all over again. We've got the whole night. But I'm first this time, Candy. You can watch if you promise not to scream. I'M the one who gets to scream when I have another of those GORGEOUS orgasms. I'm getting breathless just thinking about it."

  That was how I got the safe open. In fact, three safes. Well, not exactly as I planned, but one must learn to improvise. One must know how to go deeper into things than one might have, at first, intended.

  One has to know when to take things lying down.

  Alas, if it had only kept up on a level with that night.

  Chapter 10

  For more than sixty hours now, my best-laid plans were getting blocked. Stopping Heller was not making any progress, and it MUST, it MUST, it MUST!

  In the back room of the apartment, I was fidgeting. Part of it was scratching fleas.

  For two days a Hellish din had been going on in the basement flat and garden. Redecoration and refurnishing were proceeding apace.

  I had signed a couple of Octopus Oil blank petty cash invoices with the name John Smith, and after that all Hades had come unstuck. Workmen in the front room, workmen in the back room, workmen in the garden. Plumbers, painters, electricians and even gays directing the new decor and furnishings. It was a very good lesson that one should never sign invoices!

  But the main reason I was fidgeting (aside from scratching fleas) was my inability to raise Raht on the two-way-response radio. I knew he had it and I also knew he was refusing to answer it, just to spite me.

  I did not dare phone the New York office, as I was on the run. Raht was different, because on the two-way I could fool him into thinking I was in Africa.

  That I contact him was desperately crucial: The 831 Relayers were on and at this close range my viewers were just flared out. I did NOT know what was going on with my Target One: Heller! Without that data and without a check on that hellhound, the Countess Krak, I dared not act.

  I was in a rage to get something-anything-done to begin the job of finishing him off.

  I had money-three thousand dollars. Two of the bills were my regular pay. The third one was for overtime.

  I stared disconsolately into a bucket of daffodil-yellow paint. A flea was swimming around in it, getting all yellow. I was about to push him under with a paint paddle when he jumped out and vanished. The incident sharpened my restless mood. I had to get out of this overrun place and think.

  I wiped some yellow paint spatters off my trench coat and went out for a walk. The brisk and windy day should cool my fevered brow, calm me and let me concentrate.

  All unsuspecting, I walked by a newsstand. And there on the front page of the New York Grimes, big as big, it said:

  WOMEN'S BOMB RIGHTS

  COMING UP AT UN

  SECURITY COUNCIL

  PETTICOAT PICKETING BEGINS

  ANTINUCLEAR PROTEST

  MARCHERS HOLD RALLY

  AT EMPIRE UNIVERSITY

  Heller again! They had put that headline there just to nag me.

  Then the full import of it hit me. If that bill passed the Security Council now, Miss Simmons would be drooling all over Heller! Rather than flunk him out of Empire as she had promised, she would pass him! I would have lost a vital ally I had counted on to block his villainous rehabilitation of this planet, a plot that would ruin me, Lombar and Rockecenter.

  Oh, I knew an emergency when I saw one. What could I do?

  I stood on the corner, almost frantic with the urgency of the emergency. I stared up into the sky, beseeching the Gods for an omen. I got it! Right in my line of view was the Octopus Oil Company Building! Rockecenter was in his Heaven and all would soon be right with the world. I realized that Bury could not possibly know that "Wister" was behind this women's rights thing. Rockecenter, Bury and everyone who mattered knew how dangerous women were already. But completely aside from that, Rockecenter controlled the uranium supplies of the world, and the thermonuclear-bomb market would crash if there was no more war on the horizon! That bill, if passed, could bring about a devastating and disastrous peace! Rockecenter must be frantic!

  No sooner realized than activated. I strode with swift stride to the Octopus building.

  I walked straight in through the Benevolent Association door. I was in luck! There sat Bury! His little snap-brim hat was sitting on top of a cage of white mice on his desk. He looked up and the sides of his mouth twitched, as close to a smile as ever appeared on that prune face.

  "Inkswitch!" he said. "Come in. Haven't seen you for a day or two." He waved a hand at the interview chair, "Take the stand. What have you been up to?"

  I sat down. "I have to keep up my cover as a Federal agent," I said. "I just dropped in to see if you know about this Women's Thermonuclear Rights Bill."

  "Women," he said. "I try to stay away from those. Without much luck, I must say: they are as hard t
o escape as subpoena servers."

  "Well, I thought you might like to know that this Wister is behind that bill right up to the hilt. He's a menace."

  "Oh, Wister," he said. And the look came in his eyes that can only possibly appear in the hard orbs of a Wall

  Street lawyer. Then he tented his hands and sat back. "But I think we've got that case pretty well into due process. Madison is on it. And from the bills we're getting from F. F. B. O., I'd say he was pretty busy."

  "Wister has got to be stopped," I said.

  The "smile" twitched the sides of his mouth. "Well, you just wait, Inkswitch. Anything a public-relations man like J. Warbler Madman is onto is going to be stopped. You can count on it! By the time that maniac is through with Wister, the poor (bleep) will be absolutely begging for the electric chair and throwing anyone who tries to get a governor's reprieve straight out of his cell. Madison you can count on, Inkswitch. He tops every snake I ever met! When you combine the Madisons of this world with the media we have, even the Four Horsemen would plead for an out-of-court settlement. Worry not, Inkswitch. You can count on Madison to absolutely ruin Wister's life. The prosecution rests."

  I saw I wasn't getting anywhere with Bury. I rose to go.

  "Oh, by the way, Inkswitch," he said, "I just remembered, I had a present to send you the other day and my secretary told me he didn't have your current address."

  "Snakes?" I said.

  "No," he said. "They're pretty valuable. I picked up a set of acupuncture needles over in China and I thought you might like to try them out on Miss Agnes. If you put them in the wrong place, they raise hell. So what's your current address?"

  "I'm undercover," I said.

  "Oh, hell, Inkswitch, I know that. This is just for my own notebook."

  I couldn't very well refuse and expose the fact that

  I'd never even met Miss Agnes. I gave him the basement-apartment address. He wrote it down in a little black book. Then he paused.

  "I know this address," he said, prune wrinkles even more pronounced as he thought. "Yes, I was over there last month hushing up a murder. Somebody beaten to death. I have it! That's Miss Pinch's apartment!" He looked at me in real surprise. "Jesus," he exclaimed, "you're not living with Miss Pinch, are you?"

  I said, "I got her under control."

  "Jesus!" he said, admiringly. "Maybe I ought to turn you loose on my wife!"

  Hastily, I shifted the subject on him. I was busy enough without another stud assignment. And I vividly remembered his wife's voice. Traumatic!"Please don't tell Miss Agnes I'm living with Miss Pinch," I said.

  Bury shook his head. "Oh, no. You got a low opinion of me, Inkswitch, if you think I'd talk to Miss Agnes. I'm not crazy. At least, I'm not committed yet, in spite of this job."

  "That's two of us," I said. But it was a lie. Being a Wall Street lawyer could not be anywhere near as tough as the job of an Apparatus officer. I left.

  I was convinced that Bury didn't realize how serious this UN thing really was. I needed to get busy stopping Heller before he stopped everybody.

  I found a cab and very soon was across town at 42 Mess Street.

  Madison's Excalibur car was in the alley in front of the place, and an enterprising new reporter was polishing up its square yards of chrome.

  I went upstairs into the loft pressroom. Just as I suspected, the place had gone slack. There were hardly any reporters there. Only half a dozen phones were ringing at once and over half of the fifty teletype machines were idle.

  Madison was in his cluttered office, his feet on his desk, a complacent smile upon his youthful, sincere and earnest face.

  "Smith!" he said. "Come in. Sit down. I haven't seen you all day."

  It offended me. Wasn't anybody ever going to notice, when I'd been gone for weeks, months even?

  I suddenly remembered I had a bone to pick with him. "You certainly weren't very smart sending Doctor Crobe away," I said sourly.

  "Phetus P. Crobe?" he said, laughing.

  "The doctor you had put away."

  "Put away?" he said. "Why, where'd you get that idea, Smith?"

  "You sent for the wagon," I said.

  "Oh, I get it. Your men didn't come back and see me. Right after they carted him off, I was on the phone to the chief psychiatrist at Bellevue. Crobe seemed anxious to cut things, as all psychiatrists are, so they gave him his own laboratory and a top job on staff. You didn't think I'd overlook a valuable asset like that, did you? Heaven forbid. What would the media do for horror if it weren't for psychiatrists? But I've got to build him up before I can use him. You should keep track of things better, Smith. And I do wish you knew more about public relations than you do. It's hard to work with amateurs. That loony (bleep) could have killed me. You apparently don't know much about psychiatrists or you would have sent him directly to the hospital and not let him run around loose, slashing away at your colleagues. Psychiatry is for the public, Smith. Not for people who matter."

  I saw I was in danger of being hectored. I said,

  "Don't land on me with all four feet. You're in no position to. There's a grave threat growing up around Wister and what are you doing about him? Next to nothing. The Atlantic City thing was weeks ago and by now has run its course...."

  Madison's feet came down off the desk. He sat for­ward in amazement. "Run its course? God deliver me from amateurs! It's been getting front page for weeks and weeks. It's setting an all-time record! The bulk of my staff is down at Trenton, New Jersey, stirring it up again!"

  He grabbed a huge fistful of clippings. "Look! The New Jersey governor is having an absolute fit about the theft of Atlantic City still! He's continued to maintain that it is part of New Jersey even yet. But look at this, the riots we stirred up: the citizens there are refusing now to pay state taxes. We got a dreadful row going in the New Jersey legislature and the Whiz Kid was arrested by state police for stealing the town. And look at this: The Whiz Kid hauled before the legislature and the whole body throwing whiskey bottles at him, trying to get him to promise he won't sell Atlantic City to Nevada."

  He grabbed another sheet, "And look at tomorrow's headlines!"

  I stared at the layout for the New York Grimes. It said:

  WHIZ KID DECLARED

  AN ORIGINAL OWNER

  OF ALL NEW JERSEY

  A shocked governor today was brutally brought face to face with the reality that not just

  Atlantic City but the entire state of New Jersey may belong to J. T. Wister, otherwise known as the "Whiz Kid" of recent notoriety.

  No less an authority than Professor Stringer himself, the world's leading authority on genealogy and family history, has issued an authoritative warning that Wister is a direct descendant of Chief Rancocas, head of the Lenni Lenape branch of the Delaware tribe, the original owners of New Jersey.

  The Indian name Lenni Lenape means "Original People." From this, according to Dr. Egghead, the State Historian, "it can be clearly seen that the word original, occurring in both instances, proves the claim."

  "No deed of transfer or record of sale from Chief Rancocas or the Lenni Lenape Indians can be found in the Trenton Courthouse files or archives," said the State Recorder of Deeds at this fateful meeting last night. "Therefore it must be concluded that the entire state of New Jersey still belongs to the original owners."

  Before I could finish reading, Madison slapped it on the desk. His eyes glowed. "The next day after that story, the Whiz Kid is going to order the original settlers out. After that we can get the Indian Bureau, Department of the Interior, on it and we can have another Battle of Wounded Knee and get a headline for every Federal marshal killed. And next week the Whiz Kid will escape by robbing a train...."

  That startled me. I said, "Where does this train come from? What's it doing here?"

  Madison sat back with a superior smile. Rather pity­ing. "Please see somebody about your memory, Smith. I distinctly told you a long time ago that I am trying to create the Jesse James image. Don't you reca
ll? It's the best immortal one handy. You just don't understand public relations work, Smith."

  He had needled me too much. I said, "Listen, Madi­son. I came down to tell you that the Whiz Kid is behind this women's-right-to-not-be-thermonuclear-bombed bill. It's coming right up before the UN Security Council. He got it through the General Assembly using whores to lobby for it."

  "Is that a fact?" said Madison, idly. I put a bite in my voice. "Yes, it is! And you better get to work on it!"

  "Nope," said Madison. "It doesn't fit the image." "But my Gods!" I said. "It's the TRUTH!" Madison gave an amused laugh. "Truth? What does PR have to do with truth, Smith? News today is entertain­ment. Ask NBC, CBS, ABC, ask all the major papers. They'll tell you. News is the biggest entertainment draw in the world. Now let me ask you, how can you entertain anybody by telling the truth? Preposterous! No, Smith, you just don't understand the modern media at all. Let's leave this sort of thing up to me, shall we? And then we'll have 18-point MADISON SCORES AGAIN exclamation point unquote."

  Acidly, I said, "You forgot the front quote." He said, "So I did. Rewrite: 18-point quote get the hell out of here, Smith, and let me do my job!"

  It was no wonder they called him J. Warbler Mad­man. I left before he started frothing at the mouth. Even rabies was tame compared to the bite of PR men and the media.

  But I was worried. None of them really seemed to get the danger in that UN bill. If the Security Council passed it, Rockecenter would lose all his thermonuclear profit. The Octopus Oil monopoly on uranium claims would be worthless. Lombar would be raving. And even worse, that Miss Simmons would be slobbering all over Heller as a prize hero.

  I was worried!

  I paced.

  Then INSPIRATION!

  I would go and see Miss Simmons!

  PART FORTY-TWO

  Chapter 1

  I leaped aboard an AA train and soon was speeding north. My rendezvous with destiny would set off a chain reaction even Heller would be powerless to stop.

  The roar, roar, roar of the pounding wheels carried me relentlessly forward, oblivious of the churning crowd. At last I was in action. My mission of vengeance would be fulfilled. Blood, red blood, would pay the awful price of putting me through the agonies which had spent my energies and lacerated my soul.