Mission: Earth "Voyage of Vengeance" (28 page)

"We stopped by the catacombs on the way to the university," Madison said. "They have the corpse of an American consul there who knew Garibaldi."

"Corpses, corpses, corpses," said Teenie. "Jesus, they even got them hanging from pegs on the wall! Cold and rattly. Corpses all around staring at you with sightless eyes."

I chilled.

"But get on with the translation, research staff," said Teenie. "Start winding that spaghetti around so it spells Brooklyn."

The top one was a volume of the history of the Corleone family! Timidly, I opened it and found myself staring at a photograph of "Holy Joe." Shades of Silva! Yes, there was the date of his assassination! Yikes! There was a photo of Silva!

I put the book quickly aside. I picked up the next. It had a flashy cover, a bust head in a helmet.

"Now, that's the one we're interested in," said Teenie. "Alexander the Great."

"Quite an outlaw," said Madison. "His mother, Olympia, poisoned his father, naturally, and the boy went on to rape the whole known world. He had a psychoanalytic problem but, no matter, he was one of the greatest outlaws of all time. Just a barbarian from Macedonia and he could do all that."

"You already know about him," I said.

"No, no," said Teenie. "We haven't dug into his private life at all. We haven't any idea how he got such good PR when he was such a bum. Crazy, too. Thought he was a god. But we need a few more details and then we'll be able to split for Macedonia."

"Wait," I said. "That's awfully close to Turkey. If the Turks get their hands on me, I'll be shish kebab."

"That's why we got the books on the bottom," said Teenie. "When we finish with Alexander, we can go look into 'Chinese' Gordon."

"To China?" I said.

"No, no, Inky. Jesus, are you ignorant. 'Chinese' Gordon made his last stand in Egypt. And you can see right there on that globe that you can go from Macedonia to Egypt without hitting Turkey. I'm looking forward to riding a camel up the pyramids anyway. So start chewing alphabet about Alexander so we can get out of this place. A tough-looking Mafia type was asking after you on the dock and we don't want to have to stick you in those catacombs with all those dead eyes staring at you for the rest of eternity."

We sailed just as soon as we could get a pilot and tug.

That evening, as we headed for the Strait of Messina that separates Sicily from Italy, I was not waiting up to see the whirlpools that had almost sunk Ulysses. I was in my bedchamber and the record player was going full blast.

Teenie was sharing a joint and weaving to the throb of a new record she had bought. She was giggling. The heavy-rhythmed song went:

Stupid (bleep) that I was, I thought she was giggling because she was high on pot!

In a leisurely way, through deceptively calm seas, I was being sailed onward to my doom.

Fate is sometimes like a headsman who is in no hurry: he gets the victim on the platform, adjusts the condemned man's neck just so, artistically hones his axe and sends an assistant off for a mug of beer so he can enjoy the scenery and gloat before he delivers the sizzling swoosh that will sever forever the desirable connection between skull and torso.

There is no doubt that the scenery was beautiful. We rounded the bottom end of Greece, passing through the Cyclades into the legendary Aegean Sea. The azure waters were lapped by the cooling breezes of late spring; the white cotton-puff clouds rose in majesty above the fabled isles of song and story. The white yacht drew a gentle wake but it was a fatal mark in my history.

Over to the east of us lay Turkey, but it was further than a hundred miles and out of sight-and, unfortunately, out of mind for me. Our course lay between the two continents of Europe and Asia. As I was well-oiled on pot at night and distracted by exercise all day, Asia, where catastrophe awaited, might as well have been on another planet.

Four cruising days were consumed, days like drops of lifeblood running out unseen. I had found that the yacht, at low speeds, did not bob around at all even in a moderate sea and Bitts was nothing loathe to drink beer in his pilot chair and yarn with his watch officers about Jason and the Golden Fleece and experiences they themselves had had with girls and ouzo on one or another island that we passed. Teenie herself seemed to find this very educational, for she was up there two or three times a day.

I gave attention to my own duty. Every day I checked up on Heller and Krak. There was seven hours' time difference now and it was three or four in the afternoon aboard the yacht before they were very active in the morning in New York.

Only once did I hear a mention of the yacht. They were at breakfast in their condo sunshine room because it was pouring rain outside.

"I'm sorry you lost the ship," said Heller. "It was very nice."

"The Turkish navy had more use for it than I did," said the Countess. "You've been cured completely of your silliness about other women and I have no slightest idea of ever running away from you again. Besides, we're finishing up here very swiftly and we'll be going home in no time at all. So, who needs it?"

I did. Without it, I would be in the clutches of Turkish authorities at best or full of holes from Nurse Bildirjin's father's shotgun at worst. Little did I know how much worse it was going to get.

Macedonia, where Alexander's father, Philip, had ruled, is at the north end of Greece. We sailed into the Gulf of Salonika with Mount Olympus, home of the Greek Gods, rising in snow-capped majesty to our port. We threaded our way through the fishing craft off the city of Katerini and, turning northeastward, sailed gracefully into Thessalonica, the second major port of Greece.

They found us a nice, clean berth, bombarded us with welcomes, and Teenie and Madison rolled up their sleeves to hunt down the haunts of Alexander the Great.

They pushed me into accompanying them and in a wheezing car, left over from World War II, we rattled off to the site of Philip's capital, Pella, twenty-four miles northwest of the modern city.

The archaeologists had been busy and that was all I could say for it. In an otherwise pastoral scene, they had laid bare foundations and several floors. I will admit the floors of the former residences were interesting: in later homes on Earth, you find paintings on the walls but in the time of Alexander the Great, they put the pictures on the floors! They were pebble mosaic, many-hued, heads of lions, scenes of the hunt and they WALKED ON THEM!

I right away told Teenie and Madison that this was very significant psychologically. It was obvious to me. I tried to explain it to them. "Greek Gods," I said, "dwell in the sky. Now, you can get the idea of baby Alexander trotting around here in his diapers and he sees all these Earth scenes
under
his feet, so of course he thinks he's a god in the sky. Simple. An obvious case of spacio-psychological mispositioning of the medulla oblongata, leaving him with no option but to conquer the world."

They didn't get it.

"That doesn't explain why his mother poisoned his father," said Teenie, working a camera she had mysteriously acquired and framing a shot of a particularly silly-looking lioness who was busy chomping a luckless man and laughing about it.

"Well, that's just it," I said. "I've been reading these books and she didn't. Philip was assassinated by a young man who thought he had suffered injustice at Philip's hands. I gave it to you in the notes I made for you, Madison."

"Oh, I read them," said Madison. "It's just more natural that Olympia would poison her husband. Besides, it makes better headlines. I can see it now in the
Athens Times,
18 point quote Outraged Queen Slips Hubby Arsenic unquote."

"It isn't factual," I protested.

"Factual?" said Madison, sweeping his hand to indicate the ruins of the ancient city, "what does FACT have to do with it? Alexander was 99 percent a PR creation. The legends of his life have almost nothing to do with fact. He was one of the most romanced-about outlaws in history. PRs, according to your own notes from those very books, were sweating for centuries to dream up new copy about Alexander. And as for the poison story, even that is too close to the truth to make good newsprint. She had plenty of reason."

"Oh, come now," I said.

"Open your books!" said Madison. "Every time Philip turned around he was marrying some new woman. He practically had bedsores from so many nuptial couches. And when he finally married a skirt named Cleopatra– not the Egyptian one-his wife Olympia got fed up, grabbed Alexander, jumped into her chariot and left the kingdom in a cloud of horse biscuits. One marriage too many. A man that marries at all should be in a padded cell and a man that commits bigamy ought to be tied down and tortured by the most fiendish psychiatrist available."

It spoiled my day. I went over and sat down under an olive tree. He had expressed my own beliefs and plights altogether too well.

It was right at that moment that the true significance of the threat in Turkey hit home. I was already married twice in New York.

The thought of marrying another in Turkey was more than I could bear and when I remembered that Nurse Bildirjin was a sadist who put her knees into chests while a patient's skull was being drilled, I began to shudder. And when the fact that she was also underage wriggled into my mental torture scene, I began to be quite ill.

When we returned to the ship for lunch, I ate very little and begged off from further excursions in the afternoon. They left without me.

Slumped in the owner's salon, I was not cheered the slightest bit to hear from the lips of the small, bald-headed Mr. Twaddle, the Assistant Dean of Students at Empire, that Heller had passed all his examinations with flying colors.

"Wister," said Twaddle, standing up and removing his pipe, "I posted a notice to see you personally because I am utterly astounded! You are very close to a first ever. One hundred percent across the boards in a vast array of subjects. It's really quite astounding what we at Empire can do with a student. I look at these grades from that military college and compare it to these grades for your senior year here and it's hard to believe my eyes. What a diligent student! Goodness gracious, how you have reformed! Shows what constant application in class will do under our superlative faculty. And amazing, you never missed a single day in attendance."

"I find it somewhat astonishing myself," said Heller. The dog! He'd never set foot in those classrooms after the first few days! That Izzy had arranged it all!

"So that puts your class average at the top as well. So I am pleased to tell you, and wanted to do so personally, that you are graduating as a Bachelor of Nuclear Science and Engineering next week, Magna Cum Laude."

"I appreciate it," said Heller.

"Oh, don't thank me. There's another note here from Miss Simmons. She's usually an absolute tiger on students. Hard to understand. She's the one who called it to the attention of the faculty that you should be given the highest possible honors. Here's her note. She says, 'I am eternally grateful to this student for the way he has promoted relations between my students and myself. Without what he has done, it would be a joyless world.' She even made a speech at faculty meeting, telling them she had never been more satisfied."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Heller. "It was touch and go there for a while. But after a time she began to come around."

I mourned the loss of my ally.

"Now, there's one more thing," said Mr. Twaddle. "You finished your senior year as an ROTC officer. According to your enrollment in the ROTC, you should be sworn in to the United States Army as a second lieutenant and go on active duty."

"Sworn in?" said Heller.

"Take the oath of allegiance and all that," said Mr. Twaddle.

"That would be..." Heller stopped. I knew the quandary this was putting him in. As a Grade X Royal officer of the Voltar Fleet, he would incur the death penalty if he swore allegiance to some alien force. I became very alert. If this happened, I had him!

Mr. Twaddle raised a hand to silence him. "Your ROTC studies were for G-2, Army Intelligence. Your diploma is for nuclear science.

Colonel Tanc sent over a new Army ruling. Here it is, right here. As there is no war in progress at the moment, the Army has no need of more intelligence. Unless war is declared, any nuclear engineer is permitted to apply himself to his trade in a civilian capacity. So the news is that your induction into the Army has been deferred. And you can accept all those high-priced industry offers that will be raining on our students come graduation day."

"Wonderful," said Heller.

My heart sank. There went my last chance. Heller would be as busy as a hurricane getting out new fuel and wrecking Rockecenter and Lombar. This was BAD!

Gloom deepened around me.

The reality of the mess I was in was reaching me.

Suddenly the thought hit me that Bury would be on my trail when Heller's villainous determination to save this planet reached his ears. A better, cleaner fuel would be just wonderful for five billion Earth people but would be death for Rockecenter and that's what counted.

I couldn't stand any more. I dragged myself to my bedchamber and lay down.

I must have dozed. I awoke to find Teenie rummaging in my closets.

She saw I was awake. "Inky, do you have an alpenstock?"

"What's an alpenstock?" I said.

"A thing you climb mountains with. I'm getting all ready for tomorrow. Maddie and I are going to drive down and climb Mount Olympus if we can."