Mission: Earth "Villainy Victorious" (5 page)

The chief clerk activated his own screens. "The passenger list shows a courier returned. That catamite, Two-lah. He's right here in Palace City, once more with his lover, Lord Endow."

"Oh, him!" said Lombar in disgust. "He wouldn't know any more than what we fed him to tell Gris. You're no help."

"Doctor Crobe came back on an earlier freighter. I remember he got mixed up with technical and scientific circles in New York, some subjects they have on Blito-P3 called
psychiatry
and
psychology.
They couldn't figure out whether he was straight up or in suspension-was on some dope called 'LSD.' He was simply sent back to Spiteos and he's there now. If you're looking for information, Crobe might have some."

"Oh, Crobe! To Hells with that idiot. I need a recent return. I wanted somebody who was on the
Blixo,
you fool. That was the last arrival. So thank you for wasting my time."

"Wait," said the chief clerk before Hisst could turn him off. "There were two other
Blixo
passengers. But they were Earth people. One was an immature Earth woman named Teenie Whopper. She's right here in Palace City."

"A young girl?" said Lombar in contempt. "She would know nothing. Who was the other one?"

"An Earthman about thirty or thirty-two. His name is J. Walter Madison. He arrived straight up and conscious."

"That's strange," said Lombar.

"I thought so, too," said the chief clerk. "Ah, here's the full file. Apparently he was accompanied by a note that said he was an invaluable man. So when he landed about eight days ago, the personnel people put him into routine channels and had him hypnotrained to speak Voltarian. But meanwhile they had the credentials he had on him translated. They still don't know why he is so invaluable. The only designation they could find in his papers termed him a
PR man."

"A what?" said Lombar. "Is that some kind of an Earth race? Like Negroes?"

"No. He's white with brown hair. Oh, here's the rest of it. From cards in his wallet, it said he was employed by 'F. F. B. O.' and was retained to do Rockecenter work."

"Part of the Rockecenter organization!" cried Lombar. "Quick! Get that Earthman over here FAST!"

NOW things could begin moving!

J. Walter Madison felt pretty giddy and strange. Here he was on some strange planet in a stainless steel room. It had been bad enough to sit in a detention cell at the base and realize he was a helpless prisoner. But immediately afterwards it had gotten far worse.

Every preconception he might have had about space travel and extraterrestrials had been shattered. He had boarded a flying saucer that didn't look like a saucer but simply like an old Earth freighter whose hull went all the way around it. The crew looked like Earth people with a subtle difference that this lot was shabbier than any crew he had ever seen or heard of. They talked a language which seemed composed of vowels and consonants completely alien to any Earth alphabet, but their gestures, pointings and nods were understandable.

When he had landed on a stormy shore with Gris from the yacht, he had begun to encounter little mysteries, but he had merely toyed with them as something amusing to occupy his mind. The shattering truth that he was in the hands of-what was the name they kept repeating? Voltarians? – hit him like a crash when they put him in a cabin, showed him how to strap himself into a gimbal bed, and then only minutes later he had looked out the port and seen Earth dwindling at such a rate below it was promptly as small as a billiard ball.

It was all so shocking that he didn't even have time to be afraid.

Then Teenie Whopper had walked in and said, "What a (bleeping) mess this is! Oh, wait until I get my hands on that (bleeped) Inkswitch!"

"TEENIE!" he had cried. "We're in outer space!"

"Where the hell did you think we were? On a Coney Island merry-go-round?"

"I don't understand it!" he had said.

"Oh, can it, Maddie. Don't be so God (bleeped) dumb. That (bleep) Inkswitch was an extraterrestrial named Soltan Gris. I always knew there was something nutty about him. His (bleep) and (bleeps) were a lot too big for any human, and I'm an expert. We been shanghaied!" She had been pretty mad and had stamped out.

It had all left him pretty blue. He sat down in a gimbal chair and gloomed and gloomed. He thought about his mother and despaired of ever being able to sleep with her again. She was so nice.

A fellow whose name he had made out to be "Captain Bolz" had come to see him after a day of this. Finding he spoke no Turkish, Bolz had used a tourist phrase book, cross-translating from Turkish to English, to tell him that he had better learn to eat the food as that was all there was, asked him if he played blackjack and did he want to buy a bottle of real, genuine counterfeit Scotch. Madison had been too depressed to respond very much and Bolz had stood there, scratching his hairy chest and looking at him, and had finally left.

He hadn't seen Bolz again for three more days of gloom. And then the captain came to him with a question. It was pretty hard to converse through that phrase book. But he made out that Bolz wanted to know if he had any influence over Teenie Whopper.

Madison had been so puzzled that Bolz had finally led him down a passageway and opened a room door, gesturing in with an expressive hand.

There, face down on the bed, was a pretty-looking boy. He had makeup on his face. A beatific smile was on his lips. A crew member was standing there, getting back into his clothes. The man leered at Captain Bolz and, buckling his belt, swaggered out.

The boy licked his lips and smiled a vacant smile. He had just lain there, ignoring them.

Teenie had abruptly issued into the passageway from the next cabin. She was counting a sheaf of what appeared to be gold paper. Was it money?

She had seen him. "Hello, Maddie. How's tricks?" Without waiting for an answer, she went in, stuck a joint in the pretty boy's mouth and lit it.

"Teenie!" Madison had cried. "What are you doing?"

"What's it look like I'm doing? I'm trying to make some money we can spend when we land. Greenbacks won't be any good on Voltar. You want us to starve?"

"But what are you doing with that boy?"

"Oh, him? That's Twolah, nicknamed Too-Too. He's just about the most nympho catamite you ever did see. And when he's hopped up on marijuana he can take it all day and all night, too! He's a sponge! Kind of cute, too. You want a piece?"

Madison had recoiled in horror. "You mean you're selling him to this crew?"

"Of course. Five Voltarian credits a crack. I've made 150 credits already. My own worry is that this crew is going to run out of money. They say this voyage lasts six weeks. But they got some jewelry and things. And they can steal ship fittings."

"Listen, Teenie, this captain here is boiling mad. He came to get me to see if I could control you."

Teenie had looked at Bolz with a strange sort of smile. "Oh, he can't do anything about it. He's afraid the crew will mutiny if he interferes with this business. I made sure he believed that by throwing a knife at him in the dark. So now he's trying to get you to do the dirty work and stop me. He's a (bleep), Maddie. But don't give it a second thought."

At that moment another crewman had come in and, after a sneering look at Bolz, as though daring him to do something, had handed Teenie five credits. Then he began to take off his engineering coveralls.

Madison had opened his mouth to protest but Teenie had cut him off. "Unless you want to have to pay a credit for watching, get lost." And she had slammed the door in their faces.

Bolz had given up on him and Madison had gloomed in his cabin for another week. Then he had gotten curious and begun to wander through the ship.

He had guessed he was going toward the bridge when he had passed an open door.

There Teenie had sat. It was Captain Bolz's office! Teenie had had Captain Bolz's hat on the back of her head, her ponytail over her shoulder, and her hands had been busy with a ledger book.

"Hello, Maddie. You decided to come out of your hole?"

"What are you doing in Captain Bolz's office? He'll murder you!"

"Oh, no, he won't. Old Bolzy got upset with all the (bleeping) that was going on. He doesn't like boys but all the chatter from his crew got him so hard up he was busting his pants. But I handled it."

"You mean you're letting Captain Bolz-do-sleep with you?"

"Oh, hell no, Maddie. I got more sense than that. I just been going down on him once a day to keep him cooled off. I charge him ten credits and I'm just looking up to see how much money he's got. And look here, he's rolling in it."

"Are you going to rob him? He'll kill us!"

"No, no. No robbery, Maddie. How crude! I'm worth whatever the traffic will bear and I could show you if you'd ever let me. You could even– – "

"No, no!" Madison had said, aghast, horrified at doing something like that with a girl.

"You sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. You're trying to make me be unfaithful to my mother! I won't have that, Teenie. And don't do anything awful to Captain Bolz. We're at his complete mercy!"

Her laughter had been extravagant. "Bolzy? Look at all this dough, Maddie. See? These things are numbers. My problem is that I set my price too low and Bolzy, after he's had it done to him, can't (bleep) for another whole day, not even with what I learned from the Hong Kong whore."

She had looked dreamy, her too-big eyes fixed on the ceiling pipes, caressing her too-big lips with the end of a pen. Then she had laughed abruptly.

"I have it! I'll just begin to slip hash oil into his hot jolt. Man, I'll have him (bleeping) three times a day!"

Madison had retreated to his cabin, the vision of being on a spaceship out of control turning into nightmares in his dreams.

He had suffered through the rest of the trip, clinging precariously to his sanity.

He had landed in a place of such strange architecture he could not accept it.

He had been talked at by men in odd uniforms.

In a room that seemed to be made of stainless steel, they had plopped a helmet on his head and then for six successive days he had thought that he must have some awful disease that had put him in a coma.

Just this morning he had awakened fully. He had found his baggage was there in the room with him. He had seen what might be a shower but couldn't figure out how to turn it on. He had then stood in front of what might be a nozzle and peered at it and it suddenly sprayed him! Very disconcerting!

Now there was a knock and he was soaking wet.

He went to the door intending to open it, but it opened.

A man was standing there in a black uniform. "You better get a move on," the man said. "The chief has just sent for you."

"The chief?"

"Lombar Hisst! Don't stand there gaping. If that's your baggage, get some clothes out and get dressed. And you better look pretty respectable. But don't delay. The message said it was very urgent. So put some throttle to it."

"Where am I?" said Madison.

"You're standing right there, idiot."

"No, no. I mean where is this place?"

"Well, the chief is at Palace City where he always is these days, and I've got your airbus standing by. So hurry."

"No, I mean where is this place I am in?"

"You're in the Training Center of the Extra-Voltarian Personnel Induction Unit, Coordinated Information Apparatus."

"Yes, but what sun or star or something?"

"Oh, sizzling comets, I knew I should have brought an induction escort with me. You mean you don't know where you are?"

"You get the idea," said Madison.

"This is the planet Voltar, capital of the Voltar Confederacy. You're thirteen miles south of Government City in an Apparatus compound. I am Captain Slash of the 43rd Death Battalion, Apparatus."

"What's going on?"

"Buckets, how would I know? Here." And he fished out something and gave it to Madison. "But don't spend any time on it. I tell you the
chief
is waiting! Hells, man, get DRESSED!"

Madison went back toward his baggage, head in a whirl.

Then it hit him suddenly. HE HAD BEEN SPEAKING VOLTARIAN!

He couldn't understand how that had come about.

He started to lay aside whatever it was the man had handed him. His eye caught at it.

A NEWSPAPER!

He read something about the storming of a mountain on Calabar where the Apparatus had lost a thousand troops to heavy fire from the rebel forces of Prince Mortiiy.

NEWSPAPERS! THEY HAD NEWSPAPERS HERE!

He suddenly felt more at home.

Then he was startled to realize he was reading it all with ease!

Had he forgotten English? He said, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." No, he could still speak English.

He looked at the paper again. It had headlines and news stories, just like a paper should. It was all kind of bland, with no appeal to a PR, but it was a real newspaper, titled
The Daily Speaker.

Oh, this was great. It wasn't such a foreign world after all.

He opened up the sheet to an inner page. There were some pictures, three-dimensional, in color. He turned another sheet.

A small picture. Was it familiar?

YES!

JEROME TERRANCE WISTER!

No, this must be just coincidence rampant. What would a picture of him be doing in a Voltar paper? Madison knew that even he wasn't good enough to reach out into circulation like that!

He read the caption and story. It said:

HELLER WHEREABOUTS

UNKNOWN

Commenting yesterday on the general arrest warrant broadcast on Homeview, a Fleet spokesman said, "The Fleet has no knowledge of any general warrant for Jettero Heller. The famed combat engineer was last reported on mission and the Fleet has no knowledge of his whereabouts. It is probable that the rumored general warrant is just some clerical blunder on the part of the Apparatus which, it might be pointed out, never loses a chance to defame the Fleet. As a combat engineer, Royal Officer Heller is empowered to act on his own cognizance and report back when he believes his assignment finished. The Fleet has no slightest worry about Jettero Heller."