by Ron Hubbard
“I was just trying to help,” I said lamely. But I was laughing inside. I knew he would use the fatal name we gave him. He was so dumb, we’d even bugged his ship behind his back.
“Well, here’s to a successful mission,” I said, standing up and shaking him by the hand. “I am sure you will be a great agent. Just what we want.”
As I went out, I looked again at the warplanes: the huge maws of their single cannon could blast away half a planet: the tug wouldn’t even be a swallow for them. With a shudder, I hurried off to the hangar quarters for ship crews to find Stabb. I would spread a new rumor that Heller had secret orders to kill them all, including the assassin pilots. Maybe, then, they’d slaughter Heller before we left and I’d never again have to ride in that (bleeped) tug! I don’t like warplanes and I’d detest being shot down by one.
Chapter 5
I was in no fit mood for what I received next.
With a new pitcher of iced sira, I was just lying back in the temple’s shadow once more when, pell-mell, here came Karagoz.
“You got a caller,” he said. “The taxi driver says he’s got to see you right away.”
I uncoiled like a striking snake. “(Bleep) him!” Here was something I could vent my venom on! “Show him into the atrium!” There was a fountain there. Maybe I could hold his head under water until he drowned!
The atrium, the courtyard which the main Roman house was built around, usually was quite bare and forbidding, a suitable place for an execution. But today, it was changed. Karagoz and the gardener had brought in some tall, vased plants; expensive new rugs draped the tiles; comfortable seats were ranged around the fountain and the play of the water made the place musical and cool. (Bleep). Wrong setting!
The taxi driver was standing there spinning his cap airily around a forefinger. He was smiling and cheerful. (Bleep)! Wrong mood!
Well, I’d soon cut him down to size! “What the Hells do you mean sending a perfectly clean girl back to Istanbul?”
He didn’t seem to remember. Then he said, “Oh, that girl! Oh, you were lucky, Sultan Bey. The doctor found she had (bleep) and (bleep) both. A walking epidemic! A total hellcat in the bargain. You said to take her for a ride, so I got her rid back to Istanbul!”
I knew he was lying. I was just sucking in my breath to really blast him and demand a return of some lira, when this crazy nut had the nerve to sit down! In my presence! Right on a padded lounge! It took my breath away. Such gall!
But there was a sly, conspiratorial air about him. He looked at the doorway and satisfied himself that we were alone. “Officer Gris,” he whispered, “I’ve really run into something!”
I hoped he was going to tell me he had smashed up his car completely. But he looked too cheerful. There is something about people about to whisper secrets that makes one listen.
“When that girl blew up on you,” he whispered, “I knew you would be upset. I certainly didn’t want to tangle with you.”
That was better. Proper respect after all! I sat down and leaned closer to hear better. “A couple weeks ago,” he continued in a low voice, “I heard of a certain fellow to the east of here, over at Bolvadin to be exact. So I ran over there in my off-time — I won’t charge you for the trip because we’re friends.”
This was better.
“What would you say to a real dancing girl? Not some Istanbul whore that can just twitch her belly, but a real one!”
I leaned closer.
“Listen, Officer Gris. This is really wonderful. The Russians in Turkmen, over on the other side of the Caspian Sea, have been grabbing the nomads and forcing them onto collective farms. They’re mopping up the whole Kara Kum Desert!
“Them as don’t settle get shot. It’s pretty grisly. But listen, there’s a plus side to it for us.” He drew very close. “Rather than live like that, guess what? The women,”
and he looked around carefully and lowered his voice, “are selling themselves off!”
Oh, did he have my attention now!
“These girls,” he continued, “are real Turks. The Turks, you know, inhabited an area from the Caspian to Siberia at one time. They all speak the same language. They hardly even have local accents. And, Officer Gris, they’ve maintained all their original social customs and these girls are nomad desert girls and they are the absolute cream of all Turkish dancers! And they’re also experts at… well… you know.”
He came even closer. “They’re virgins because the tribal customs won’t have it otherwise. So there’s no danger of you know what.”
I was right on the edge of my seat.
“Now, what they have to do is smuggle them out from behind the Iron Curtain. They have to push them from the Kara Kum Desert to the Caspian Sea port of Cheleken. Then they are carried down to the Iranian port of Pahlevi. They cross Iran and at the border town of Rezaiyeh, they are smuggled into Turkey. They are taken to Bolvadin and she can be brought here.”
He sat back. I didn’t. “I am sure you can furnish identity papers. As she would be a real Turk, speaking Turkish, that’s easy. Well, what do you say?”
My head was spinning! What an opportunity! And right in my line! When you’re an expert in tradecraft, you can appreciate these things.
“What would she look like?” I slavered.
He looked around again. We were still alone but he lowered his voice. “He had already sold most of them. Actually, he only had just one left. And I don’t think she’ll be wanting takers very long.” He was secretively fishing in his pocket. “Her name is Utanc.” And he handed me a photograph.
Oh, Heavens, my heart almost turned over!
The face! The beautiful face!
She looked very young, possibly eighteen. She had enormous eyes, vivid even though they were downcast. She had a perfect heart-shaped face. Her lips were very full and a finger posed against the lower one obscured them not at all. She seemed to be withdrawing slightly.
Of course! Utanc! Turks name their women after qualities. And utanc means “shame, modesty, bashfulness.”
So sweet! So beautiful! So utterly frail! So undefended!
An emotion very foreign to me welled up. An absolute passion to protect her welled up in me. I felt I should at once charge over the border, slay the whole Russian Army, cast myself at her feet and beg for just one smile.
I sighed and somehow tore my eyes away. I turned the photograph over. On the back, in pencil, was written: $5,000 U.S. Cash.
“You’d own her completely,” whispered the driver. “She would be your slave forever. And saving her from the raping Russian troops would earn her gratitude to such a degree, she would never be able to thank you enough!”
Well, what could I do?
I reached into my pocket and I hauled out five thousand U.S. dollars and literally pushed them at him.
“There’s the transport costs and commissions,” said the driver. “They come to another five thousand.”
I reached into my pocket and hauled out the other five thousand.
He got up. “I’m so glad to be able to do you a favor, Sultan Bey. We’ll forget about my gas and travel time.”
He tried to refuse the wad of lira I thrust at him. Finally he shrugged and took it.
“It will take them a week or so to smuggle her through,” he said. “Now I’ve got to rush back to Bolvadin to get this payment in before she is sold to someone else.” And he hurried off and I heard his tires screech as the “taxi” departed. I certainly hoped he was in time.
And that night, I slept with her photo on my pillow and, oh, did I dream beautiful dreams!
I felt so good that when, in the dawn, I made out Faht Bey beside the bed, I wasn’t even annoyed.
“Raht radioed in,” he said. “He’s all set. You can leave for America as soon as it is dark.”
I didn’t even hear him as he left, probably he was saying he would tell the tug crew.
I clutched the photo in my hand and kissed it passionately. Gods bless the raping Russian troop
s if they were delivering into my hands such a treasure as this! There’s a lot to be said for communism!
Chapter 6
We took off as soon as dusk thickened into deep black.
There are some — persons with hypercritical attitudes and chronically given to nitpicking — who might try to say that the heady prospects of owning a real, live dancing girl distracted me from my duties. But this would be the purest cabal.
That day before take-off I was the slave of duty. I browbeat Faht Bey into giving me all the money I would need and then some. I armed myself thoroughly with Earth weaponry. I collected all the necessary equipment. I threatened the villa staff thoroughly and even had one of the small boys throwing up again.
I connected up the 831 Relayer and, slave of duty that I was being, inspected what Heller was up to inside the ship.
He was making candy!
That’s right! He was standing in the after-galley with pots and pans. He even had an apron on! He was using a big spoon to test a simmering mess of the gooiest, most nauseating-looking candy I have ever seen!
I thought, well, well, he must have learned it from his sister. He was being so precise, I thought, isn’t that sweet? And actually was so revolted that I didn’t even spot it was an English pun until much later.
A little later, I checked again. He had a whole bunch of little papers and he was putting the candy down on them in blobs.
When I came back from threatening the staff again, Heller had the pieces all wrapped up in wax paper. They seemed to be very hard and had a spiral pattern of red and white stripes.
I knew he was being silly. There’s lots of candy just like that in America. You can buy it all over the place. It’s even advertised in big colorful ads in the crew’s hangar library, foreign magazine section.
Oh, good, I said sarcastically, he’s preparing for his trip. And I dismissed it.
Oh, I was very busy that day before take-off. I spent at least two hours on Apparatus business which more than made up for the ten I spent reclining on the lawn, daydreaming about Utanc.
The launching went off without a hitch. It is very simple to travel on Earth: it has only one moon and even it is not all that bright. So all one has to do is launch in the darkness and then follow the night as it creeps along the planet surface. One dawdles along about three hundred miles up and then descends quickly to find himself at the same local time as that of one’s departure point.
Captain Stabb certainly showed an expertise in such things. The Apparatus school could well add some lectures on piracy and smuggling. He told me several amusing stories as we descended, including one about wiping out a whole city. Uproarious!
We followed the textbook landing procedure, however.
Below us was the deserted plantation: the empty, fallow field, the ruined house with two front pillars gone, the slave shacks passed to ruin.
About five hundred feet up, Stabb hit the paralysis button. A heavy flash of bright blue light struck down from the ship in a cone, lasting only a split second; if seen by anyone they would suppose it to be the reflection of headlamps of a turning car or a lightning flash on the horizon.
Stabb thudded the tug down right on target, within the screen of trees, horizontally, on its belly.
The second pilot slammed open the airlock door. The second engineer, in combat dress, was on the ground in a second. He was carrying a heat detector which he pointed in a sweep at the terrain.
The bright blue light knocks any living thing in the area unconscious. The heat detector tells one if there is now anyone lying there. Standard operation. Saves one from having some nasty surprises. And actually is quite humanitarian: one doesn’t have to kill a chance observer, one can just go off and let the person come to, wondering what hit him, not running around screaming, “Voltar pilots have just violated Code Number a-36-544 M Section B!” Dead bodies are hard to get rid of on the spur of the moment and bring in nosy sheriffs and things.
The second engineer’s detector flashed red! Something had been knocked out by the blueflash!
The first pilot, blastrifle at ready, sprinted in the direction of the indicator beam. Stabb was tensed at the tug controls, ready to take off again in case the alert turned out to be an ambush.
The Virginia night was August, muggy hot. A thin sliver of moonlight silhouetted the copse of trees. A wind sighed through the weeds around the spaceship.
Then a bark of laughter. The first pilot came running back. He was holding an opossum by the tail! He threw it to one side. “Seems all clear,” he said.
“All clear!” said the second engineer, tossing his heat detector back into the airlock.
Stabb peered into the night, his close-set eyes intent. “Where the Hells are they? We’ve got to be back at the base before the sun rises there!” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve only got twenty-five minutes to hang around here!”
Suddenly, running feet in the distance, coming down a weed-grown road.
Raht burst into view. He was lugging two enormous suitcases.
He is the most unremarkable-looking Earthman one ever cared to see. Aside from a bristling mustache he affects, there is not one other feature to make him stick in memory. The perfect spy. He is from the planet Modon and glad they were to get rid of him.
He boosted the suitcases into the airlock. He was panting with exertion. But he saw me in the dim shimmer of interior light. “Cripes!” he said, “It’s Officer Gris himself.” He always has a bit of a complaining note when he speaks.
“What have you got in these suitcases?” I demanded. “The orders were to get expensive luggage filled with clothes.”
He pushed them further into the airlock. “Clothes cost money. You’ve no idea what inflation is, I made up the weight with rocks!”
He had made up the weight with money in his own pocket, I said to myself. But I hit the buzzer to the back and picked up the bags to take them to Heller. I did not want him to see the agents that would be tailing him from here on out.
Heller had released the passageway doors. I struggled through and dumped the two huge suitcases in the salon. They were expensive-looking cases.
He was sitting at the table. I said, “You’ll find clothes in there. Get dressed fast. Take no clothes of your own. You only have a little over twenty minutes, so don’t dawdle.” I left him, closing the doors behind me.
Raht was still breathing hard. I drew him into the crew salon. He took out a sheaf of documents. “Here’s his military school diploma.”
I read:
SAINT LEE MILITARY ACADEMY
Greetings: DELBERT JOHN ROCKECENTER,
JUNIOR
has completed his education to the
level of JUNIOR COLLEGE.
Signed, sealed (etc.)
It was a very imposing diploma. It had Confederate soldiers holding rifles at port arms. It had banners and cannons. Very fancy.
“Here’s the rest of the papers,” said Raht. They were attested transcripts of subjects and grades.
“What clever forgeries,” I said.
“Hells no,” said Raht. “They’re the authentic signatures. The school closed last spring for keeps and the ex-faculty will do anything for a buck. You think I want to get sent up for forgery?”
Always complaining, even when you give him a compliment.
“Where’s Terb?” I demanded. “We haven’t got much time.”
“Maybe he’s having trouble. The old clerk at that (bleeped) courthouse didn’t want to come down after hours.”
Captain Stabb looked in, pointing at his watch. “We’re going to have to race to make it now. We have to get back while it’s still night!”
But here was Terb, leaping in through the airlock. Terb is one of the most unremarkable Earthmen you’d ever want to see. A bit on the plump side, a bit swarthy, but you would never pick him out in a crowd. He’s from the planet Dolo and they were very glad to get rid of him.
“Not Officer Gris himself!” he said. “We must be
important after all! Raht, I been wrong. All this time I been telling you we was just dirt and now…”
“Shut up,” I said. “Is the birth certificate fixed?”
Terb nodded. He took a small electric switch out of his pocket. “The old clerk wants to see him so he can attest the certificate is issued to a real person known to him that ain’t dead. He don’t like to be thought crooked. This bird we got here will present himself, hand over another C-note, get the certificate all signed. Then the instant he walks down the steps of that courthouse, I hit this and good-bye clerk, good-bye records. I planted the bomb before dawn today. Right in the record files!”
I gave them the activator-receiver. “This is a special bug. You must keep this within two hundred miles of him at all times.”
“But we got him bugged,” said Raht. “There’s bugs in those clothes and there’s bugs in those suitcases and we have the activator right here. We can’t possibly lose him!”
“This is another type of bug, an aerial bug,” I lied. “It’s inserted in his elbow and registers if he handles explosives or touches guns: we don’t want you getting shot.”
Oh, that was different!
“We can spot him from a ship with this,” I lied. “Now this is the 831 Relayer. Keep it right with the activator-receiver.’’
They got that.
“Just leave them turned on all the time. See, they look like a telephone connection box. You can put them on the outside of any building or under a bed.”
They promised.
Then Raht said, “Money. For us. Inflation is awful!”
I handed them a draft on the Chase-Arab New York Bank. They were happy. So was I: it was government money.
I gave them a few tips. Then I said, “Now get out of here before he sees you.”
They went diving out of the airlock, sprinted past the faintly moonlit plantation house and were gone.
