Mission: Earth "Voyage of Vengeance" (25 page)

The director began to weep with relief. He muttered something.

"He wants to assure you," said the interpreter, "that the illegal heroin traffic is maintained at its highest peak and hopes you won't report otherwise."

"I'll take his word for it," I said.

The port director got the interpretation and seized my hands, kissing them. He said something else, pleadingly.

The interpreter said, "He wants you to come to dinner at his house this evening. He has a beautiful wife and daughter and insists you spend the night and sleep with them both."

I opened my mouth to protest and the interpreter quickly shook his head warningly. "Please don't refuse him. You will insult the French national honor. It would put him in a terrible position. He would have a nervous breakdown."

Wearily, I had to let Teenie and Madison visit the Chateau prison while I went to dinner.

All in all, Marseilles was a terrible experience. I left sharing wholeheartedly the opinions of my steward about the French.

The wife was fat and the daughter had a harelip.

Things like that tend to color your attitude.

We sailed the following morning. The sea was rough and I lay stricken in my bunk. The captain and the sports director came in.

"I am making a ship inspection," said Captain Bitts, "to make sure the French haven't stolen us blind." He gazed at my stricken face. "The Chief Steward tells me you went to the port director's home. Have you still got your wallet?"

Miserably, I fumbled under my pillow. I nodded, yes.

"Well, all right, then," he said. "We've only lost four fire hose nozzles. We were lucky." He was about to leave when he turned back, frowning. "You didn't drink any French wine, did you? They make it by squashing the grapes with bare feet and they often have athlete's foot. I wouldn't want the owner coming down with athlete's foot of the stomach."

"The port director served wine but I didn't drink any," I said.

"The port director!" he said, startled. "Jesus, you didn't sleep with his wife and daughter, did you?"

I nodded miserably.

"Well, (bleep) my eyes!" said Captain Bitts. "Sports, rush up to my cabin and get my medical kit. Steward, have you bathed him?"

The steward looked pretty agitated. The Chief Steward frowned at him. The two of them grabbed me out of bed, thrust me under a shower and began to get to work with antiseptic soap.

"Burn the sheets and the clothes he was wearing," ordered Bitts. "We can't risk an infested ship. Nothing will kill French lice but fire. They carry typhus."

The medical kit arrived. The captain got out syringes and needles that looked like they had been designed as bilge pumps. He filled them. They held me down. He shot me in the butt with three kinds of antibiotics and a heavy preventive dose of neoarsphenamine. It hurt!

As I was queasy, he finished up with a suppository of Dramamine. "If you're not up and around in a few minutes," he said, "I can give you an injection of Marezine for that motion sickness."

Another injection? "I'll be up right away!" I said.

Dressed in some new clothes, I wanly made my way to the breakfast salon. To my surprise, Teenie and Madison were at the table gobbling down omelets.

I pretended to eat so the waiter wouldn't tell the captain I better have that injection. This (bleeped) crew knew everything that went on.

The omelet gobbling was getting me. I decided to distract them. "How did it go at the prison?" I said.

"Wonderful," said Madison. "They opened every door in the place for us. They almost gave us the prison. What did you tell that port director, Smith?"

"It's a state secret," I said.

"Well, it must have been something remarkable," he said. "We saw skeletons that have been there since

Napoleon's day. Of course, the place is full of tourists now that couldn't pay their hotel bills, but we found everything we went to find."

"So what did you locate?" I said, afraid that he'd start on another omelet.

"Nothing!" he said. "Absolutely nothing. We thought we had found an opening between two cells, but it was new works, being done by a couple from Des Moines who had had their passports stolen. So we have irrefutable negative evidence. There never was a Count of Monte Cristo!"

"That doesn't sound very successful," I said to cover up the fact I wasn't eating.

"Oh, but it IS, it IS!" said Madison. "Here is this internationally known outlaw, totally immortal, name on the tongue-tip of every school child and movie director, who never existed at all! Don't you see? It's the PR triumph of the ages! Total notoriety and not a single spark of fact to sully it anywhere. It means you can create even the flesh and blood of fame without the slightest vestige of reality. What a PR that Alexandre Dumas was! God, they don't make them like that anymore."

"Tell him about the other lead," said Teenie.

"Oh, yes," said Madison. "Every officer and guard we talked to about immortal Frenchmen would kiss their fingertips and say reverently, 'Napoleon!' They looked so ecstatic that, if you don't mind, Smith, we'll drop off at Corsica and visit his home. It's right on our way."

Anything to get away from the sight of all that food. And getting to another port and calm water was irresistible. I went quickly to the bridge.

Captain Bitts was sitting in his pilot chair looking at the sky and tumultuous sea. I said, "Could we stop off in Corsica?"

"I wondered where we were going," he said. "It really doesn't tell a captain much when an owner staggers aboard and says, 'For God's sakes, sail!' Any particular port?"

"Napoleon's home."

"I think that would be Ajaccio, if memory serves me right. A bit more than halfway down the Corsican west coast. But wait a minute. That place is French. I don't think you'd better go ashore. I don't want to lose an owner to some (bleeped) French whore. I already lost four fire nozzles."

I promised I would stay aboard. He went into the chartroom to plot his course and I left quickly before he noticed I was looking as bad as I felt. He might give me the Marezine injection.

It didn't do me any good. The sports director shortly had me doing laps.

We came to anchor in the port of Ajaccio the next day. Thankfully, I stood on a steady deck and looked at the dramatic silhouettes of the mountains, jutting ruggedly to the sky. Rose, crimson and violet granites made splashes of color amongst the luxuriant vegetation.

We weren't permitted to use our own boats because it might deprive the inhabitants of francs, and Teenie and Madison went ashore in a puffing tug.

I did my laps and exercises obediently and after lunch went down to my owner's salon. I thought I was up to watching the viewers.

It was early in the day in New York but Heller was in his office reading texts, flipping the pages too fast for me to see what they were.

The Countess Krak came in, dressed in a severe black suit, her blond hair in a bun on the back of her head. She looked like a school teacher except considerably more so.

"My microwave engineers are doing fine," she said. Then she walked around the desk, put a hand on his shoulder and looked at what he was reading. She could follow it; I couldn't. "Why, Jettero," she said. "What in the world are you doing with a textbook on primitive electronics?"

"They think that's the way things are," he said. "And if you put any truth down on an examination paper, you'd flunk."

"Examination? You don't have to take any college examinations. Izzy has that all fixed up. Exam papers will be handed in at Empire for you."

"Oh, no," said Heller. "It's one thing to do class attendance for me or even hand in quizzes. But I couldn't accept a diploma until I had been examined for it and passed. It's only three days to examination week. I've got to bone up."

"Oh, Jettero. You're too honest to live! Their science reeks with incorrect premises. I battle them every day with these microwave people. The errors are so stupid even I can catch them and I know little enough."

"You've got to say what the professor said," he replied. "I'd flunk if I didn't. And I need that diploma or nobody will believe me."

"Hi, hi, hi," said another voice. "Anybody home?" It was Bang-Bang. "Come on, Jet. I've got the M-l."

The Countess Krak looked at him. He was standing there with a rifle. "Who you going to shoot?" she said.

"No, no," said Bang-Bang. "Got a lot of candidates but no time. Jet here has got to graduate from the ROTC and he never once has been to a drill. He don't even know the manual of arms."

"Teach her," said Jet. "And she'll teach me. I've got to finish this crazy text on quadratic equations."

Bang-Bang stared at the Countess Krak. His jaw was dropped.

"Go ahead," said Heller. "It won't take her long. She already knows a manual or two."

"WHAT?" said Bang-Bang.

"I have a few minutes," said the Countess Krak. "Show me how it goes."

Very diffidently, Bang-Bang tightened the rifle strap and began to go through an army manual of arms. Right shoulder arms, order arms, inspection arms, parade rest, calling the orders and counting the movements by the numbers.

"I've got it," said the Countess Krak.

"You've got it?" said Bang-Bang, incredulous. "You haven't touched the rifle!"

"Well, why?" said the Countess Krak. "It looks pretty primitive to me."

"Oh, yeah," said Bang-Bang. "That's the army way and it is pretty primitive. Here's the real way to do it. Marine Corps."

He went through a manual punctuated with very sharp slaps of strap and butt.

"I've got it," said the Countess Krak.

"Oh, come off of it, Miss Joy. Don't try to snow me. I haven't had my first drink of Scotch today."

The Countess Krak took the M-l from him. She examined it. "Seems a little light," she said. She studied its working parts. Then she checked its balance.

Suddenly, very fast, she went through the army manual. Then, without pausing, she went through the Marine Corps manual.

Bang-Bang stood there, popeyed.

"Now, a
real
manual," said the Countess Krak, "would go like this."

And despite the restrictions of the office, she sent the rifle through a manual of arms that was so spinning and so ornate that the weapon was a blur except at those instants when it came to split-second positions, dead still. And then she went into a Fleet marine dress parade manual. The swirling weapon made loud swooshes as it spun and the slaps were as loud as pistol shots. She finished.

"Jesus Christ!" said Bang-Bang. "I ain't never seen nothing like that before in my life! And done by a beautiful woman, too!"

"A captain by the name of Snelz taught her," said Heller. "So she could be smuggled in and out of a ship."

"Snelz?" said Bang-Bang.

"Yes," said Heller. "He was a Fleet marine once."

"Oh, that accounts for it," said Bang-Bang. "Miss Joy, could you show me how that last manual you did goes?"

The whole thing made me very uneasy. I had forgotten she had been taught to handle a rifle. I wouldn't put it beyond Snelz to have taught her how to shoot it, too. Gods, supposing she took it into her head to go gunning for me? She was deadly enough already without this.

Oh, I didn't like the way things were going. Miss Simmons was out of the running. The spores project was completed. Heller was going to take his exams and get a diploma. The Countess Krak was training microwave engineers for some purpose I could not fathom.

Without me right on the ground to trip them up, they might very well succeed!

I could feel the assassin's blade going into my back. For that was my lot if they did.

I looked at the two-way-response radio. I wished fervently I could think of something to order Raht to do. I couldn't, but I must.

My only choice right now was to stay good and lost, keep out of Turkey and the U. S. and hope that my training and brilliance would come up with something which would stop this juggernaut of disaster. I couldn't dawdle forever. I would be squashed.

Little did I know that that malign Earth God, Juggernaut, already had his foot far more than halfway down on the back of my neck right that minute!

They came back in the pink glow of evening. From their chatter at dinner, I made out that they had been at the
Maison Bonaparte
and the
Musee Napoleonien
and hadn't learned a blessed thing about Napoleon except that the island depended on tourism and didn't like tourists.

"What can you tell about an outlaw from his baby clothes?" Madison said. "Things have certainly become decadent. Corsica was once synonymous for bandits, but now they are running the restaurants and hotels. The criminal fraternity is always tight-lipped, though."

"You'd have thought we were the fuzz," said Teenie, getting around her second pheasant under glass. "Every time Maddie would get the interpreter to ask, 'Where was the main hideout of this great outlaw, Napoleon?' they'd just clam up and glare. As soon as I get around two or three helpings of ice cream, I've got to put in library time."

I gaped. Teenie in a library? She could barely read. But sure enough, she grabbed her radio and turning it on full blast to pop from Radio Luxembourg, dived into the library and began to burrow in the books.

I looked in at this extremely novel sight of Teenie trying to read. She was tapping her foot to the pop music and moving her lips painfully as her fingers slowly traced the lines of a page. She found she was reading
Hull Maintenance.

Shortly, she yelled for the Chief Steward and he came in and seeing what she was pointing at, he indulgently unlocked some glassed cases nobody had looked into since the yacht was built. She stared at a set of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
and recoiled, dismayed, from the size of the books. But bravely, she persevered. "What letters come before and after
N,
Inky?"