Mission: Earth "Doomed Planet" (3 page)

THEN THE STORM!

Warders had to fight like lepertiges to hold the mob in check. The prison guards were blurs of motion with electric whips. They managed,jo hold the front of the room clear and keep Gris from being torn limb from limb, but only because somebody and then somebody else noticed that Lord Turn was banging his gong for all he was worth: they saw the motion, the sound was lost. He was also holding up his hand. Gradually, because Lord Turn was trying to say something, the din temporarily subsided. "HOWEVER!" shouted Turn into his amplifier, probably for the twentieth time, and when he could be heard, proceeded, "I shall have to hold Soltan Gris in custody, until I clarify the status of Jettero Heller. Soltan Gris may have done other crimes that only Heller is aware of. It is quite probable that Soltan Gris will not escape severe punishment or even execution yet. Warders! Return the prisoner to his cell. THIS TRIAL IS ENDED!" The crowd was slightly mollified. But groups of them, when driven from the court, went out screaming, "Death to the Apparatus!" Gris, on hearing the first finding, had soared to elation. Then, on hearing the second, had nose-dived into despair. He was dragged off, half-unconscious, to his cell, not even walking. Madison, watching Gris go, was in a turmoil of his own. He was scared stiff at what Teenie might be thinking or planning now. He had NOT gotten her the custody of Gris. But wait, was there a loophole open? He wondered and then shuddered. He was suddenly aware that he didn't have much time. Public reaction might boil over. Lombar might be upset by all this. Teenie would be screaming. Then suddenly he began to smile. He still had power. He would bring this off to glory yet and bring it off with a BANG!

Madison lived through the following day. It was awful for him. His best-laid plans had not worked! The trial developments had absolutely smothered the Heller issue. He felt that Heller had somehow sneaked up on him, giving those blackmail files to the Gris attorneys. Didn't Heller realize that Madison was only trying to make him immortal? Who could possibly object to that, much less actively thwart it? Confound these amateur interferences with PR! And that was not all that was bothering Madison: Teenie would be in an absolute fury! Deprived of her prey despite Madison's promises, there was no telling what she might do. Then there was the matter of Lombar Hisst: he would not be pleased at the way the Apparatus was being mauled. Madison wondered nervously if he was losing his grip. Maybe he was not neurotic enough lately and, as a consequence, maybe his genius was slipping. Standing at his bedroom window in the townhouse, gazing out over Joy City, he felt that his sphere of influence was collapsing. A pall of smoke was rising a quarter of a mile away. He heard some noise behind him and he said, "What's happening over there?" It was the circus girl, Flip. She had taken to making his bed lately and laying out his clothes and talking with innuendos which alarmed him. She came to the window. "Oh, that's the Dagger Club, an Apparatus officer hangout. Chi and I were over there when the mobs burned it. But it's a shabby dive, not even anything to loot. The morgue services are overstrained and a lot of bodies are still lying in the streets, but we didn't even get anything out of that: some rotten crook had already taken their wallets." Her hand was cupping his behind. It made him very edgy. He moved away, reaching for a jacket. "Oh, I wouldn't go out, if I were you," said Flip. "It would be much nicer to stay here and just loll around in bed. There's mobs all over the place looking for Apparatus officers. There comes one right now." Madison went back to the window. About a thousand people were surging into the street seventy-six floors below. Even at this height, he could hear a chant: Death to the Apparatus! Death to the men of crime! Death to the shabby criminals! Death to the "drunks" in slime! Death to the shameless murderers! Death to their leader, too! Death to the Apparatus! Death to the whole (bleeped) crew! "Something seems to have upset them," said Madison. "Oh, people are upset, all right," said Flip. "It provides a lot of opportunities to pick pockets and such: a good, healthy crime environment. Every city is like that today. Me and a couple of the other girls were going out again but it would be much safer for you, Chief, if you just slid your pants off and got back into bed. I know a lot of nice things to do. I could start off with a (bleep) job. You wouldn't even have to exert yourself, just lie back and enjoy it. Then you could____________________

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"I've got to think," said Madison. "Well, think while I'm working on you: you might get some great ideas. Here, put your hand____________________

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"Flip, run out and tell my reporters I want to see them in my office." "Oh, Chief, you don't need those (bleepards) to stand around and watch. They might get hot and pile in! They can't (bleep) worth a (bleep): we know; we tried them." She was taking her robe off. Firmly, he put it back on her. "Flip, please." "There's something weird about you, Chief. I mean it. Go get your own (bleep) reporters!" After she flounced out, Madison located Flick and had him form a reporter conference in his office. The five reporters, the horror story writer and, as a consultant, the director, soon stood around Madison's desk. "How do we stand?" said Madison. "We don't," said one of the reporters. "In every paper the Gris finding is all over the front page. To make it even worse, in addition to the shocker news of finding Gris not guilty, somebody gave the papers a photo taken last year at some farewell party for some tug and it shows him eating a human hand. It was probably cake but it's driving the country insane. They're screaming now that the Apparatus are cannibals. Page two is burning buildings. The rest of the paper is pretty well taken up with lists of mob casualties. We tried half the morning to plant your follow-ups on the Heller rescue. The news offices are jammed with other things. Even the wives are running around in circles. You know this old-shepherd-woman caper claiming she spotted Heller in a cave? Hells, we even lost her when she joined a mob. We got nothing planted." "From my knowledge in directing riot scenes," said the director, "I'd say this situation was going to escalate rather than calm down. I dressed up the two actors as Domestic Police generals and sent them around. The Domestic Police believe the situation is out of control: they want the Army to help and the Army is saying 'Up your (bleep), we got trouble enough with trying to contain the Fleet.' It ain't good." "Oh, it's not all bad," said Flick, uninvited, from the door. "A lot of the crew was getting nervous about being connected to the Apparatus, so me and Cun and Twa was out until dawn collecting identoplates off corpses. Citizens, bluebottles, officials, we must have about two thousand of them, anything you want. We even got thirty sets of different numbers from wrecked cars. The computers will be out of date or jammed for weeks so it's safe as safe to use them. If I hadn't sworn off robbing banks, we'd be in clover. But at least we've got mobility. So things look pretty good." "I'm open for suggestions as to how we seize press initiative again," said Madison. "Well," said the director, "I'd say we just sit tight and let things simmer down." The others nodded. Madison shook his head. "I've been trying to teach you some of the rudiments of PR. Well, one of them has to do with trends. You don't buck a trend. That's fatal: You just expend your energy being battered. The thing you have to do is go WITH the trend." "Well, this trend," said a reporter, "happens to be composed of riots and resistance to the Apparatus. The crowds are tearing them limb from limb wherever they can be found outside the defense perimeters of their bases and staging areas. It's the trend that's giving us trouble." "Nevertheless," said Madison, "the principle still holds. Trying to smooth things over with PR is a waste of a good tool. There is another principle you must understand: You must always make trends worse." "Worse?" said a reporter. "That's blasted near impossible. The mobs are burning buildings and tearing down monuments; traffic control is almost shattered; the hospitals are overflowing; the newssheet staffs can hardly get to work and distribution is getting grim. Every major city in the Confederacy is like that. If it gets any worse, Madison heaved a deep sigh. Green PR men were awfully hard to train. But that wasn't all that was making him sigh. He didn't like to fire off his last two rounds. "No," said Madison. "The progress and advancement of a culture is measured by how much worse things get. The greatest authorities that ever lived proved that constantly. Lord Keynes, Karl Marx-real geniuses like that-kept that principle continually in mind. That's why they are almost worshiped. They were also some of the greatest PR men that ever lived. Now let's take up the three Cs again: maximum Coverage, maximum Controversy, maximum Confidence. The only way we can obtain those is to make things worse." "Comets!" said a reporter. "Things can't possibly get much worse. They'll be shutting off phone service and utilities next! Chief, there's close to a hundred billion people on the streets in riot mobs…" "Oh, dear," said Madison. "I see I'm not getting across. We've got to escalate Controversy. And Controversy is really Conflict. Only then can we regain Coverage and restore our Confidence in ourselves as PR men." "Escalate Controversy?" said one of the gawping reporters. "The whole population is against the Apparatus. The Fleet and Army are in a head-on collision. The Domestic Police… did you hear those shots in the street just then?" "The Domestic Police are against everybody," finished another reporter. "There's more Controversy/Conflict around than there's been for the past ten thousand years. You CAN'T POSSIBLY escalate it!" "Oh, yes, we can," said Madison. "And to do our jobs as PR men, we MUST!" "How?" they gaped at him. Madison leaned forward. He beckoned. They put their heads near his. He whispered. When they drew back, they were staring at him with awe. "OH, MY GODS!" the horror story writer said. "He CAN escalate it!" Madison smiled. Now he would get things back on the rails and going in the right direction: at Heller.

Palace City was the safest place to be. Not only was it thirteen minutes in the future but, like Spiteos, it was protected from mobs by the simple fact that they could not cross the vast Great Desert on foot or with ground cars. Palace City also had heavy exterior defense bunkers that could shoot anything out of the sky. Under the yellow mist of warped space, in the great round antechamber of the Emperor, Lombar Hisst sat with his back to the locked and bolted bedroom door and faced his general staff. A red-uniformed old criminal, whose battle-scarred face also bore traces of debauchery and no sleep, was speaking. "The Army finally took it into their heads to cooperate," he said. "A thousand transports have landed a million men on Calabar. This freed up the remainder of our forces there and they should be arriving at Apparatus Staging Area Seven by this evening. So, factually, sir, we don't have any more troops on Calabar, only a few observers. That puts me out of a job as Calabar staff overseer here. And I was wondering if I might not take a little run up into the Blike Mountains. I've an estate there…" "You'll stay on duty!" thundered Hisst, slapping his stinger down on his desk. "Set up a bureau for future population suppression. This would never have happened if we'd planned for it." He pointed the stinger at another general. "If Tur there had had his wits about him, if he'd done some advance planning, he wouldn't be in trouble now. Gas. Set up some ps extermination chambers for troublemakers: I'll get you the plans from one of the Blito-P3 surveys." "Sir," said the general indicated, "I don't think there's any time for construction of anything. Over two hundred Apparatus town headquarters have been wiped out to a man. If I could just have a few troops from the staging areas____________________

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"Empty a few prisons and put the inmates in uniform," snapped Hisst. "Do I have to think of everything?" Tur was already doing that as fast as he could but he held his peace. "Now you, General Muk," said Hisst, "how are you coming along with the Earth-invasion staging?" "As a matter of fact," said Muk, squirming, "I've put the invasion of Blito-P3 on hold. It seemed to me that the two and a half million troops might be needed right here on Voltar." "Bah!" said Hisst, glaring at the other generals. "We have a million and a half Apparatus troops to handle Voltar and some of the others. This is no full-scale civil war. It's just mobs. Sooner or later they'll get tired of being shot down and that will be the end of it." "We are having trouble with suppliers," said Muk. "The troops that came in from Calabar are short of everything. We can't seem to get deliveries into the staging areas." He added hastily, "We are, of course, sending out armored convoys and simply raiding civilian warehouses and we can, of course, accomplish our outfitting. We have had some trouble with mobs burning plants and we have lost eighteen convoys in street fights as of this morning, but we can be invasion-ready in a couple of days, even so. It just seemed to me that with all this trouble, you might need the Blito-P3 force here." "No, no, no," said Lombar. "We're just fighting riffraff. You others simply need to take stronger measures, that's all. The invasion goes off as scheduled, regardless of local disturbance." He gave a short, barking laugh. "Unarmed rabble, riffraff." "They seem pretty mad," muttered a general in the rear. "We've already lost over fifty thousand men." "Who's that?" snarled Lombar. "Are you frightened or something? Well, speak up!" He didn't get an answer, for running feet sounded in the outside hall. A staff officer, followed by two men, raced into the room. The others looked up in alarm. The three were carrying huge stacks of papers. The staff officer dumped his on Lombar's desk and pointed with a shaking finger. Headlines, full first page:

HELLER KIDNAPS EMPEROR

Seventy papers said the same, A general came out of his shock and frantically switched on a Homeview set. The words blared out, "IN THE MOST DARING RAID IN VOLTAR HISTORY, THE OUTLAW JETTERO HELLER HAS KIDNAPPED CLING THE LOFTY, EMPEROR OF VOLTAR!" The generals stood like scarlet ice statues, eyes filled with the headlines, ears pounded by the din.