THREE RED DEVILS SAT IN THE CHAIRS!
A dismembered man appeared, bleeding gouts of blood on the sacrificial altar! Another devil above him brought down a knife! The victim let out a scream.
The devil in the easy chair turned to Flick and said, “Stay around. You’re next!”
Flick tried to rush from the room. He hit Madison in the door and they both went down.
On hands and knees and then on foot they fled down the hall.
Finally they ran out of run and stopped with shuddering breath.
“I don’t like this place,” said Flick.
Madison bolstered his own nerve. “Look, Flick, we’ve got to find the crew. Let’s try in here.”
Flick nervously pushed his torch around this new room. It was obviously a rather posh salon. Various lounges sat in the expanse. The floor was bare and the walls were bare. It looked like somebody had half moved out.
There was a long buffet table and Flick opened a door of it, probably expecting vases or valuables. It was a panel instead.
“Don’t touch the big one,” cautioned Madison. “I don’t know what will happen.”
Flick sorted down a rank of buttons and pushed one.
The salon lights came on.
Now that they could see it better, it was a very nice room, even though the walls and floor were bare.
There was a big set of glass doors at the end. Flick pushed another switch and it was as if floodlights had turned on in a lovely garden. A fountain was playing out there and birds could be heard to sing.
Emboldened, Flick touched another button.
Suddenly, the room was beautifully decorated!
There was a rug on the floor.
Vases with flowers appeared on small wall tables.
PAINTINGS APPEARED ON THE WALLS!
Hastily, Flick turned the switch off. Vases, flowers, rug and paintings vanished!
“OH, MY GODS!” cried Flick. “The objects of art we meant to rob are JUST ELECTRONIC ILLUSIONS!”
Madison suddenly understood. He had seen Lombar Hisst in his red uniform step in front of a thing the Master of Palace City had had placed before the building, and an apparently solid Lombar Hisst, two hundred feet tall, had appeared over the building blessing it.
General Loop was crazy as a coot on scenery with his officers and devils and all. But he was smart as a whip on theft and security.
THERE WAS NOTHING TO STEAL!
Tears were running down Flick’s face. With leaden steps he dragged himself away. With a sad, sad voice he muttered, “There goes my dream,” and fumbled off to the seventy-sixth floor, leaving it all to Madison to find the vanished crew.
It was a moment of agony and gloom.
PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 5
Madison had worked for hours rescuing the crew. Belts underneath the upper-hall floors had shunted them to a “prison” on the seventy-sixth floor and they had been waiting there in fear of being returned to the Domestic Confederacy Prison when Madison let them out.
An embarrassed electronics security man had explained that he also had been taken in, for he said the devices were not of a type in general circulation outside the security forces. He recovered a spare from an electronic parts storeroom and, after he had figured it out, showed them all it was just a chip about the size of a pen point which, put in the path of a microscopic projector, gave images in the air which could move and emit sound. The spare, fortunately, was not of any ghost but of a small boy taking a pee and the crew morale had been restored, even if the laughs were weak.
The scaler had gotten over his fright after a few convulsions, aware now that people were laughing at him and anxious to make amends.
General Loop, they all agreed, had been purloining government property and devices, and this made him a fellow criminal and so, somehow, made it all right. Whether he had done all this just to exercise a hobby or scare his fellow officers half to death was entirely beyond their interest. Madison had another theory that manufacturers, knowing Loop was somewhat crazy, had installed the devices in the hope of getting a contract after showing what they could do. Madison had noticed different makers’ names on the activating boxes; he didn’t think any of this was in use or known to the government at all. He had not found a single Security Forces stamp on anything. If it were government property or even known to the government, it would have long since been taken out. But he didn’t disagree with the crew; they needed all the solace they could get.
The crisis was over. The crew had slept. And Madison now had other things to do.
In a seventy-sixth floor briefing room which General Loop had probably used to address his own staff, Madison had assembled his gang here today for purposes of his own.
They looked much better now: the men had shaved and cut their hair, the women were coiffed and made up. They were gaunt but good food would handle that. The prison pallor still showed through but a few days under sunlamps would turn them a more natural color. The stink was gone!
The cooks were lounging in the doors, the rest sat on chairs and benches. And all eyes were on Madison as he stood upon the raised platform at the front of the large room.
“I have gathered you together this afternoon,” said Madison, “in order to clarify for you why you are really here. I am certain some of you have probably wondered, and the very essence of a team is a common purpose.
“Now, I know some of you were curious as to what PR man really meant. It does not mean ‘parole officer’: I just told them that so I could spring you.”
The crew sat up more alertly. It made them feel better to know that they were not in the hands of just another Apparatus officer but with one who now seemed to be saying that he had other goals and might well be a master criminal in his own right, only using the Apparatus for some crooked purpose of his own. His popularity rose.
“The actual meaning of PR,” continued Madison, “is PUBLIC RELATIONS. That is the activity in which you will now be engaged.”
They nodded but now they looked puzzled. They had never heard of this. The only relations they had ever had with the public consisted of victimizing it.
“As this will be your work,” said Madison, “I had better explain in detail.”
Madison stood up very straight. His face began to glow. His own love of his subject took over. In a voice more suited to a cathedral, he said, “PR is one of the noblest pursuits of man!”
His audience was jolted. They stared at him wide-eyed.
Madison was off. His voice contained the caress of eulogy. “Public Relations is an art that FAR transcends mere painting and crass poetry.”
The audience gawped.
“It is,” crooned Madison, “the magic of telling people what to think and bludgeons them to change their minds.”
A roustabout called out, “Now that’s more like it. Do we hit soft to stun or hard to kill?”
Madison smiled a beautiful smile. “You always hit to kill.”
The gang buzzed and nodded. “Got it,” came from many voices. Then someone in an aside to his neighbor confided loudly, “That’s what his Lieutenant Flick said last night. He’s a killer! One of the greatest murderers of all time!”
Everyone began to applaud, even the cooks at the door. Then they stood and chanted, “The chief! The chief! The chief!” Madison, an expert at timing and stage presence, knew when speeches should end. He bowed.
The tumult had died down as the people were now departing.
Madison became aware of something. No Flick. He called out, “Where is Lieutenant Flick?”
The driver footwoman said, “He’s in bed. He didn’t even touch me. I can’t do my job. I think he’s down in the mouth. Even suicidal.”
Madison, in alarm, immediately passed through the halls to the apartment which had been appropriated by Flick.
The man was lying with his face to the wall. He appeared to be completely caved in. Madison had to shake him by the shoulder to get any response.
<
br /> “What’s the matter?” said Madison.
“Life is over,” muttered Flick.
“Why?” said Madison.
Flick moaned, “Don’t ever rob a man of his dreams. It’s death.”
Madison looked down at him. The lethargy was pronounced. He knew he couldn’t live with him in this condition. He thought fast.
“Don’t you have any other dreams?” he said.
Flick groaned and then at length turned over on his back. “Just one, but it’s impossible. I shouldn’t even think of it.”
“Tell me,” said Madison.
“It’s a dream I get and then always have to abandon. It’s to meet Hightee Heller in person.” Then he groaned, “But she has billions of fans. I couldn’t even force my way through such a crowd. I haven’t even ever been able to afford a ticket to her personal appearances. So forget I even mentioned it. No, life is over for poor Flick.” And he turned back to the wall with an awful, shuddering sigh.
Madison went over to the window. The mammoth dome of Homeview was gleaming in the late day sun. Something clicked inside his head.
Lombar was trying to find Heller. Madison also had to know.
The orderly outline of a plan began to form on the glass before his eyes in Old Century 10-point type.
On some off chance, Hightee Heller might know where Heller-Wister is. If so, she might be tricked into telling Madison.
If she doesn’t know, then she might have lines she can use—unwittingly, of course—to get somebody to tell her.
He would have to have an excuse to see her often so she could spill the information to him when she got it.
Then suddenly, the whole sheet jacked up and a banner, 22-point, all caps, seemed to flow across the glass:
BUILD THE IMAGE
BEFORE YOU FIT
HELLER TO IT!
“YOWEEE!” shouted Madison. He sprang into the air, he danced around the room. He knew EXACTLY how to go about it now!
“What the hells is happening?” said Flick, afraid that Madison had gone crazy.
Madison came to the side of the bed. He put on his most sincere and earnest look. “Flick,” he said, “if I introduce you to Hightee Heller in person, will you give up trying to pull off robberies?”
Flick stared at him. Then he saw from the sincere and earnest look that Madison wasn’t joking. “I’d have to,” said Flick. “If I met Hightee Heller in person, I couldn’t pull off no more robberies. I’d be a changed man!”
“Good,” said Madison. “It’s a bargain, then. If I see that you meet her in person, the crimes we do from here on out are only the ones that I order. Agreed?”
Flick nodded numbly, not daring to hope.
“All right,” said Madison. “Get up and get dressed. We’ve got work to do!”
Madison rushed out, ecstatic with his plan.
Oh, he was really on his way now! The smell of eventual victory was in the very air! He could REALLY get on with his job with Heller!
PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 6
The first thing Madison did was get from Flick the name of a certain type of crooked jeweler.
Flick and his footwoman got into the Model 99. Madison sprang into the back.
They flashed out of the hangar and sped across the sky, Slum City a vast smudge and sprawl in the distance, growing larger.
“I know this fellow personally,” said Flick as he drove. “He’s from Calabar like me. But we ain’t never been in the same line really. He’s rich, I’m poor. I robbed houses. He received the goods from thieves who looted tombs. The world thinks he’s respectable and I know what they think of me: I got caught and wound up in the Apparatus. He married a jeweler’s daughter and wound up owning a ‘legitimate business.’”
Shortly Flick pointed out a square which looked to Madison like an island in the middle of a ghetto sea.
They landed and the Model 99 in all its glitter instantly attracted a swarm of tough-looking, hooting kids. Suddenly Madison was aware that this footwoman had other uses than being felt up. She was out of the car like a tiger. She had somehow gotten hold of a stinger. Her target was the biggest boy and he got the weapon in the teeth with a shower of sparks. He didn’t get a chance to recoil more than a foot when the footwoman had him by the arm. In a sort of a whirling motion, she swung him—his feet left the ground—and like a scythe, used him to take out the whole front rank of hooters.
There was the departing rush of hasty feet. Into the dying echo of the screams, the footwoman thrust the stinger in the belt of her violet uniform and stepped to the door. She opened it with a bow. “Watch your step, sir. There’s garbage.”
If he hadn’t seen the killer look when she sprang out of the airbus or heard the wild animal snarl of satisfaction when she used the stinger, he would have been completely taken in by the sweet and demure smile she now exhibited. She appeared to be the mildest and kindest person you would ever want to meet. Ah, he thought with pleasure, he had quite a crew! Totally deceptive!
Madison, immaculately attired, stepped around the garbage—which happened to be the unconscious body of the one she had used as a weapon—and, with Flick, made his way to the jewelry store.
And that is exactly what it seemed to be: a store that sold the cheap gewgaws displayed behind bulletproof, steel-barred windows.
An old man in a black cloth cap that had a light and an examination magnifier on it directed them through the back of the store and shortly they were in an opulent office quite at variance with the rest of the establishment.
A very greasy, overfed man came forward from an ivory table to greet them. His head was a squashed oval like Flick’s: maybe the heavy gravity of Calabar did this to them!
“Flick, my cousin, I am so glad to see you are still out of jail. My, look at the violet uniform! Are you in the Palace Guards?”
“Cousin Baub,” said Flick, “you got to meet my new chief, Madison. We’re still in the Apparatus, but there’s a difference.”
“Well, Cousin Flick, I did hear the Apparatus had taken over the guarding of Palace City. But is your friend here safe?”
“He’s a full-fledged criminal in disguise,” said Flick. “I vouch for him.”
“Well, all right. Sit down, my friends. But I must warn you that we’re very too full stocked up, so if you’ve stolen something from the palaces, I can’t give you much price.”
“That’s very good news,” said Madison, and he took a seat. “You see, Baub, we are buyers, not sellers.”
“Ho, ho, Cousin Flick. We HAVE moved up in the world!” said Baub.
“Mister Baub,” said Madison, “I am sure that when you receive stolen gems, you recut them and remount them so they will not be quickly recognized.”
“Yes, that’s true. But good stones are of such size that their refraction indexes are known and we have to be very careful.”
“Mister Baub,” said Madison, “I know you are a man of discretion. I want an absolutely stunning stone in an absolutely stunning setting the like of which has never been seen before and WON’T be recognized.”
“Aha!” said Baub. “You’re talking about the ‘Eye of the Goddess’!”
“If it has a name,” said Madison, “it must have been known.”
“Nope,” said Baub. “It can’t be known. Because I just this minute invented it.”
Madison laughed with delight. Here was somebody he could do business with, almost in his own line.
“A few years ago,” said Baub, “over on Calabar, where everything is very big, some thieves got into a very ancient, pre-Voltarian tomb. Up to that time the tomb had been unknown, but the thieves were not. Police were on their trail and caught them and the tomb contents were inventoried and added to the National Treasury. They had rounded up the thieves and had sent them en route to an interrogation center, but the air-coach crashed in an updraft that slammed it into a hundred-thousand-foot mountain range—things are big on Calabar—and that was that. One thief, however,
right at the tomb, got away. The police never knew he existed.” He looked at Flick. “That thief was me.”
Baub sat back, nostalgia taking over. “Oh, them were the days. I had a whole bag of stones. They had never been recorded nor listed. One by one I spent them and had myself a marvelous misspent youth.” He sighed. “But that was seventy years ago and youth has fled.”
Mission Earth Volume 9: Villainy Victorious Page 20
