Mission: Earth "Death Quest" (12 page)

A woman was standing there. She was dressed like a Harley Street doctor would be dressed-black suit coat, pants and vest. She looked to be in her mid-forties. Her grayish hair was pulled severely into a knot. Her eyeglasses had a black silk ribbon. She held them and looked

through them with great distaste at the Countess Krak. So this was the Miss Agnes I pretended to know, this was the Miss Agnes that Bury hated so. Rockecenter's private shrink!

She began with no preamble. "So there you are at last! First you delay, delay, delay delivery! And all the while I am told I have this wonderful special-built present coming! A surprise it was supposed to be, a surprise I never could imagine! And what finally arrives? That horrible monster of a land yacht! An outright bald hint that I take myself away! Who wants to go away? Not me! A rotten thank-you for a lifetime of selfless service! And then what happens? I call and call and call and call! I tell you and tell you and tell you to take it away and give me the money instead. And all I get is the silly excuse that it's special-built, that it has been designed especially for me and even has a small padded cell!"

She stalked forward. Her expression was deadly. "Your driver put it right where it is! It blocked the drive! No one has been able to get in and out, for I shan't let anyone touch it until you give me the money and take it away! So give it to me," and she stretched out her claw-like hand.

The Countess Krak glanced over her shoulder to make sure the doors were closed. She reached into her purse and pulled out the blank card. She handed it to Dr. Morelay.

The woman held it close to her face.

The Countess Krak said, "There's nothing on that card, is there?"

"No."

"Then you won't mind if I put this helmet on your head, will you?"

"No."

The Countess Krak pulled a hypnohelmet out of her shopping bag and, with one smooth motion, popped it on the head of Agnes Morelay and turned it on.

She led the woman over to the consultation couch and eased her onto it. She plugged in the microphone.

"Sleep, sleep, pretty sleep. Can you hear me?"

"No."

The Countess Krak took the card out of her hand and took it over to an ashtray and touched a match to it. She came back and fanned a hand under the visor of the helmet.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yes," said Dr. Morelay.

It was only at that minute that I recalled the Eyes and Ears of Voltar perfume the Countess Krak had taken from the warehouse: it made the person say no to everything and was intended to protect chastity. What a vicious creature the Countess Krak was! And here she was daring to put a full-pledged psychologist
and
psychiatrist on her own couch! What villainy!

The Countess Krak sat down in the consultant's chair, held the microphone comfortably before her face and said, "You seem troubled about something. Would you care to tell me about it?"

"Not enough reward."

"What reward should there be?"

"Money, money, money, money!"

"What have you done to deserve it?"

"The Rockecenters had a sacred charge from Goeb-bels to render all other races incapable of defending themselves against Hitler. The Germans may have lost the war but this did not nullify the sacred trust. As a psychiatrist and psychologist, knowing my debt to Germany for those vital subjects, I have forwarded them

with dedication. The Rockecenters advocated worldwide population reduction for generations. It is a sacred family trust and I have carried it on. With every possible trick I could devise I have made Delbert John Rocke-center carry out his family commitments. Utilizing the Rockecenter control of the World Federation of Mental Stealth and the National Associations of Mental Stealth, I have spread far and wide the doctrine of Psychiatric Birth Control. And for Delbert John Rockecenter himself, personally, I caused him to found the foundations which, with glandular operations and drugs, have made him immortal."

"Is there anything else for which you should be rewarded?"

The body on the couch did a small writhe. The voice was muffled but it carried hate. "I listen to his puking drivel about watching chorus girls going to the toilet and making Miss Peace exhibit herself to him while she pees until I could simply strangle him."

The Countess Krak lowered the microphone into her shoulder. She muttered in Voltarian, "Hmm. Where there is this much hate, there must have been love. Oh, well, I'd better get down to business." She raised the mike and said in English, "Is there a son?"

The body on the couch writhed worse. "That would be a DISASTER! There is a ten-billion-dollar trust fund that would go to a son. It would split the control of Delbert John into fragments! THERE IS NO SON! THERE MUST NEVER BE A SON!" Then she relaxed a bit and an evil-sounding laugh came out of the helmet. "There can never be one now. The drugs he's been on for years and years and something else I did have made him totally impotent! I think I handled that

very nicely." Then she went into a writhe again. She grated, "The dirty, filthy, two-timing (bleep)!"

The Countess Krak lowered the microphone. "Oh dear," she said, "this hate is getting in the way." In English she said into the mike, "Was there ever a time when you were in love with Delbert John Rockecenter?"

The body on the couch did an instant explosion. Then it shuddered and writhed. Muffled venom came from the helmet. "He ought to be killed. He ought to be killed!"

"I think you better tell me all about this," said the Countess Krak.

The woman went stiff.

"Tell me," said the Countess Krak firmly.

"We were children. I lived right here on this neighboring estate. At every party, I was there. And every time I saw Delbert John, I used to think that someday I would marry all that beautiful Rockecenter money. It was what I lived for, just to marry him. I studied psychology just to know how to marry him. I took up psychiatry just to marry him. I forewent (bleeping) all the other little boys just to marry him. I didn't even (bleep) at college so I could marry him." A wail. "And what did he do? When I returned, proudly holding my psychiatric degree, all ready for the kill, the dirty (bleep) had got high on drugs and run off and married a (bleeping) chorus girl!" There was an agony of motion on the couch, as though she had been stabbed. "I was SCORNED! I was FORGOTTEN!" She got her breath. "And where was Miss Agnes, his childhood sweetheart? NOWHERE!" She lay gasping.

"So what did you do?" prompted the Countess Krak.

"I swallowed my (bleeping) pride! I served him like a slave! The family never learned of the marriage or they kept it hushed up. But that was not the problem. When

he learned that the (bleepch) was pregnant, he was beside himself. He didn't know what to do. If the baby was a son, it would inherit ten billion bucks by trusts! It would shake his control.

"He came to me. He had the woman hidden out in a lodge in the Catskills. He did not have nerve enough to kill her, the coward! And what did I do? I helped him, fool that I am. And the ungrateful (bleepard) has never begun to pay the rewards he should! Having gotten rid of her for him, he once more did not marry me!"

The Countess Krak said, "What did you do with the woman?"

"I sent her to her parents."

"Where was that?"

"A farm in Hamden County, Virginia."

"And what else did you do?"

The muffled voice said, "The parents were easy. It took money and a tale that no one was sure who the father was. And in that stuffy neighborhood, that kept them quiet. They and the girl were frightened, too. They had a choice between money and being rubbed out and they took money. But I privately used my professional connections. I made sure the local doctor did his duty."

"What was his name?"

"Tremor Graves, M.D., an old country practitioner that could have had his license suspended many times over. The woman was too far advanced for abortion. But I got his pledge to kill the child and then the mother at birth by 'natural causes.' Brought on from shock, of course."

"What shock?"

"Her parents being killed in an auto accident that cost fifteen thousand dollars."

"Where did all this occur?"

"Hamden County, Virginia."

"When?"

"Eighteen years ago."

Suddenly I understood the brilliant plot of Lombar Hisst. Somewhere in all those survey records of Earth which he studied and hoarded, due to his vast interest in the marvelous fact that a man like Delbert John Rocke-center, not of royal birth, could control a whole planet– a thing to emulate-the Apparatus chief had gotten wind of this. And he had known very well that giving Heller that name was a death warrant. I understood why he had used that very county and specified that very age. One whisper of Heller using it would bring-and indeed had brought-the Rockecenter Angels of Death swarming. Why, this was the very reason Madison was on the job! Clever, clever Lombar!

"But Delbert John Rockecenter never thanked me," said Agnes Morelay under the hypnohelmet. "He didn't do as much as thumb his nose. So I made him pay. There's a little operation one can do. A small cut with a knife. When he got knocked out in a fall from a horse, I said he'd injured his (bleeps) and I sterilized the (bleep-ard). The foundation is just another psychiatric medical fraud. The Rockecenters have always been insane but I've used every psychiatric technique to make sure it's chronic. For eighteen years I've blackmailed him into doing anything I want but I still can't get my hands on

his money. So I haven't got my reward yet but I will, I will. The (bleepard)! My psychiatric professors and all my colleagues pat me on the back and tell me how much I've done for the profession. And so I have, but Delbert John has yet to give me the Rockecenter money! No reward is enough for the sacrifice and devotion of my whole life!"

"I have heard you," said the Countess Krak. "Listen carefully. You will feel rewarded when you propose to some nice young man and settle down. Have you got that?"

"I will feel rewarded when I propose to some nice young man and settle down."

"Good. Now, as to the land yacht, when you awake, you are going to write a letter on your stationery and in it you are going to say that you have turned it over to an agent named Heavenly Joy Krackle of Sleepy Hollow, New York, to take it around and show it and try to sell it for you. But if after a period of three months it has not been sold, said Heavenly Joy Krackle may buy it for..."

She pulled down the microphone. She muttered, "Let's see, a million dollars would not be worth very much... it's now second-hand... fifty thousand credits would be a fair price on Manco. And I'll have our estates back by then...." She raised the mike and continued. "... said Heavenly Joy Krackle may buy it for fifty thousand credits. Have you got that?"

"Yes."

"And now you will forget all about the helmet and that you have told me anything. And when you have written the letter you will fully wake up, believing we only came to take the land yacht away."

She turned the helmet off, removed it and put it in her shopping bag.

Dr. Agnes Morelay rose from her couch, went straight to her desk and got some stationery with her letterhead. Krak watched her. The psychiatrist wrote:

I

Krak picked up the letter, blinked at it a couple times and then put it in her purse.

"Now," said Miss Agnes, "get the God (bleeped) thing the hell out of my driveway!"

The Countess Krak went out. She walked down the drive toward the monstrous vehicle. Bang-Bang was waiting anxiously, halfway out the gate.

Krak said, "Unload our baggage, Bang-Bang. And park that cab somewhere. We're taking this land yacht."

Bang-Bang looked anxiously at the house and then at Krak. "Hey, you couldn't have bought this. It's worth a million bucks."

"It's a steal, Bang-Bang. Get the baggage."

"Oh, Jesus," said Bang-Bang. "And Ossining just a few miles up the road."

"Hurry," said the Countess Krak.

He spun around a couple of times. Then he raced to the cab and with three trips dumped the luggage in front of the huge vehicle out of sight of the house. He raced back, jumped into the cab and drove it into the bushes down the road. He raced back, looking anxiously at the house. "Gimme the keys, quick," he said.

"Keys," said the Countess Krak. "Oh, dear, I forgot to tell her to give them to me. Bang-Bang, run in and ask Dr. Morelay to give you all the keys."

"Oh, Jesus," said Bang-Bang. "I haven't even got a gun!"

"Go," said the Countess Krak. She looked after him and he seemed to be taking a very erratic course. "I better make sure he is all right," she muttered.

She went to the baggage and reached into a case. She took out a telescope, the duplicate of the one I'd used that could see through walls and hear conversations. She turned it on, and under cover of the land yacht, focused it on the front door.

The butler let Bang-Bang in. He said, "Dr. Morelay has them, sir. This way, please."

He marched Bang-Bang down the hall and into the office, closed the door and left.

Miss Agnes was sitting at her desk, gazing into space.

"The keys and instruction books and things," said Bang-Bang.

The woman looked at him. She suddenly seemed to come to life. She rose up from the desk, walked across the office and locked the door!