The Invaders Plan (60 page)

I let my groaning die out in volume further as I tiptoed outside.

I had him! Of course, it wasn't as good as just plain doing a prefrontal lobotomy, the one the Earth psychiatrists favor; they push a common ice pick up under the eyelids and slash the prefrontal lobes of the brain to hamburger and if the patient does not die at once, he lives on as a vegetable and dies in any case from within two to five years. A highly practical solution to psychosis. But the thought of the Countess Krak restrained me. She would notice.

It is one of the trials of life that one can't have everything one wants. Still, I could do with what I had. With those optical and aural bugs in place, I would know everything Heller was doing and could block him. He now could not escape me. He was going to be totally at my mercy. Thinking of all the horrible things I had suffered at his hands, I sank into a pleasant euphoria. Justice was about to be done.

A hand was tugging at my sleeve. It was the Widow Tayl. I came out of my reverie. She was pointing in the direction of a little summerhouse some distance away in the trees.

"There's something I must show you," she whispered.

It was all going quietly in the hospital. I could now and then hear a machine move. Two hours, Prahd had said. It would be a long time yet.

Wondering at this power I had over women, I followed the Widow Tayl. I really had no illusions as to what she wanted to show me in the summerhouse.

It was a very pleasant structure, surrounded by flowering trees which drenched the air with perfume. It consisted mainly of a roof and a big, soft pad of bright yellow. A tinkle of music, soft and persuasive, came from the top peak of the ceiling, below which hung an ornate, painted glowplate. It was a secluded spot, safe from prying eyes, ideal for an interchange of secrets and other things.

"WHO was that?" She was still whispering.

I looked at her as she leaned a hand against a pillar. Her mouth was a bit slack, her eyes a trifle glazed. She was having trouble breathing. I looked at her face. I was quite surprised: the warts were gone, only a slight redness remained in the areas where they had been. Her face was quite pretty, really. I looked at her breasts: under her silken robe they were now firm and upright, no longer sagging.

I looked her up and down. I began to feel excited. I walked over to the pad and lay down, smiling at her invitingly. I became aroused, which I had never been before with her.

I expected her as usual to tear and rip at my clothes. She came over to the pad, moving slowly as though in a daze. Still robed, she lay upon it, three feet away from me. On her back and looking dreamily at the ceiling, she put her hands behind her head.

Her eyes, luminous as always, began to grow opaque. Her breath began to quicken. "When I first saw him," she whispered, "I thought he was some woods God. So strong, so powerful." The lamp in the ceiling began to swing and the music took on a throb. "He stepped out of the airbus so smoothly . . . so smoothly . . . so smoothly ..." A huge multipetalled blossom by the door seemed to get larger. "Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!" cried Pratia and the blossom burst like an explosion!

I lay there, fully clothed, propped on my elbow, staring. What the Hells was going on? She wasn't even touching me!

Her slack mouth panted for a moment. Her eyes began to roll back. "Then he stretched and began to walk." A bird peered in, curious. "His feet barely touched the ground," crooned Pratia.

The lamp was swinging as the music reached crescendo. "His toes caressed . . . caressed . . . caressed ...

"Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!" she cried as her slippers flew up in the air.

I began to frown. I was just lying there unmolested. It puzzled me.

Some birds lit quietly in a nearby tree and her breathing slowed to normal. The music was sedate again.

The lamp was still. "And then he walked past the swimming bath . . . ." The lamp began to swing.

The bird was watching intently. "... and his shadow fell across my favorite place . . . favorite place . . . favorite place.

"Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!" she cried as the flock of birds, startled, flew away.

I was beginning to get a bit upset as I looked at her.

The two of us were lying on the pad a yard apart. Her hands were still behind her head. She was breathing a bit hard but it was quieting down. "And then," she began to whisper at the ceiling, "he stopped and with a heavenly motion he removed ..." The bird was really getting intent. "... little red cap . . . little red cap . . . little red cap . . ." Once more the ceiling lamp was swinging and the music was speeding up. "... and he put it in . . . he put it in . . . he put it in ...

"Oh. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!" she cried and the bird flew frantically away.

The lamp exploded into fragments!

Red cap? Lying there, the vision of him and his red cap washed over me.

Hey! This (bleep) was thinking about Heller!

And there I was, completely available, not even being talked to, much less touched!

Oh, it made me angry!

I pushed her aside in disgust. That would show her. I stalked out of the summerhouse. She couldn't trifle with me this way!

Behind me I heard her starting again. "And then he put it in his pocket. And he stood there a moment and as he started to go in . . . to go in . . . to go in . . ." I waited to hear no more. I went over to the pool and sat down. Oh, I was cross, I can tell you.

But after a little while, I came out of it. The occasional clink in the hospital was restoring my good spirits. That filthy (bleepard) was getting his! And this was just one more injury he was paying for.

I tried to think of something even more vicious I could do. But actually what was happening was really quite enough.

It was a beautiful day after all.

About noon, wiping his hands on a bloodstained disposable coat, Doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender came out of the hospital. But he did not come over to where I sat at the pool. He went walking along one of the curving rock paths that wound artfully under the blooming trees.

Well, I thought, he just wants to stretch. He hadn't been two hours on that operation; he had been more than three and a half! Long-legged and a bit too tall, he went ambling along on a zigzag sort of course, looking down. Maybe the operation had been a failure, maybe he'd put an electric knife in too deep and killed Heller: an intriguing thought. As I considered it, it seemed to have more and more merit.

Coming back along the path, the young doctor suddenly stooped over and picked something up. Then he went over to where a naked wood nymph posed erotically in stone. He took a small hammer from an inside pocket and started hammering something against the wood nymph's metal base. What in Hells was he up to? Trying to bring the wood nymph to life by rhythmic pounding? We had one too many nymphs around here already!

At last he began to wander over toward me again. He took a little spin drill and a pair of tweezers out of his inside pocket and was holding something and buffing it, wandering closer, humming. The spin drill was going screech, screech, screech; very hard on the nerves.

Near my chair, he stopped. He put the spin drill away and got out a vial of blood. With the tweezers, he immersed something in the blood and then put the vial away. What in Hells kind of hocus-pocus was this? He had me on tenterhooks to find out what had happened in the operation.

He took out a small, gold-plated, circular box. It looked like one of those which females carry perfume pats in. Then I realized it was probably part of the Zanco delivery. Firms specialize in fancy little cases that they hand out to doctors as presents for female patients: sure enough, it had an engraved
Zanco
on the cover.

Young Doctor Prahd popped it open and with great care, laid whatever he held in his tweezers into it, puffed up the interior padding and wiped the blood off the tweezers on it.

He held it out to me very proudly. He was like some long-legged cub animal, waiting for somebody to say, "Good barker," and give it a pat on the muzzle. There was a microscopic bit of stone lying amidst the bloodstains.

"The piece of the arrowhead," said young Doctor Prahd.

"You didn't get this out of his head. I saw you pick it up, right over there." Then suddenly it dawned on me what he was doing. Hey, there was hope for this boy. He was going to give it to Heller as the convincer. But I had no idea of letting this young fool get a good opinion of himself. Compliments are the destroyer of the race: they end striving. He could slide right out from under my thumb! I dismissed the box with a wave of my hand. "It took you long enough." I glanced at my watch. "Two hours is not three hours and forty-five minutes." He looked a little crestfallen. "Well, you see, I didn't have the patient yesterday. I could have taken the basic cells then. I had to take cells of his dermis and epidermis as well as his bone. It took half an hour to get them into a sterile base and catalyze them so as to get cell supplies to use.

"Somebody had given him one of those crude vaccinations as a child and that had to be repaired so there was no scar. Then, besides the white scar in his shoulder, I had to repair an area of blastgun burn on his back.

"Then he'd caught a finger sometime or other and the nail was slightly crooked and I had not prepared nail cells so I had to get a catalyst growth tube going for those He was driving me up the tree with all this. "Come on, come on, what about the respondo-mitter and the audio-respondo-mitter?"

"Well, there really had been a small crack in the front bone. Those Fleet doctors are not careful enough. It had regrown by itself with no professional attention. It had filled itself with soft bone tissue and that all had to be scraped out. He must be from Manco. Their bones are quite hard and tough. I blunted a drill . . . ." He must have seen my impatience. He rushed on. "It made a perfect cavity for the two items. And, of course, they had to be treated and the bone cells conditioned so as not to reject them. They have tiny microscopic antennas and these have to be slotted in between the molecular cell bone joints."

"What about that sore place he had on his eyebrow?" I demanded, thinking he might have put them into a tender spot that would require a later operation that would discover the two bugs.

He seemed puzzled. Then he remembered. "Oh, there was no tender spot. That was my fingernail." He saw how impatient I was getting. He rushed on. "They are in there, they will never be detected. The scars are all gone. I think I passed my test very well." I snorted. "There was a young trainee my uncle ..."

"I thought Professor Slahb was your great-uncle?"

"I also have an uncle that's a cellologist," I said determinedly. "This young trainee was supposed to stay around and finish his contract." I was talking because he was in very elegant circumstances here. I didn't want anyone to put any ideas in his head. "But he met a young widow who was rich and he knocked right off his contract, violated all his promises and went on living with her right there!" He shook his head. "Oh, if you mean Pratia . . ." That clinched it. Pratia was the Widow Tayl's girl-name. Clearly they had gotten way into a relationship to be on a first-name basis. "So if you think I am going to pass you now, you are mistaken! I do not know if the operation works. Further, I do not know if you will talk to anyone and give away secrets. And you have no right to stand there and demand your contract be handed over. You will get that contract when you report to me on Bli . . . at your duty station. I will be there before you." He looked like he was going to stutter. It's a very good sign.

"So I have some instructions for you. Sit down!" He swallowed hard and sat down.

I had brought from the airbus a small case. "Here are three languages. They apply to your post. One is
Turkish.
Another is
English.
The other is
Italian.
There are books, dictionaries and a player machine in this case. Starting here and all during your six weeks voyage, you will study like mad. You will land on Bl . . . at your duty station, speaking, reading and writing English, Turkish and Italian. If you pass on this case as to workability and arrive knowing these languages, and if you have not violated secrecy – and believe me, I am having you watched every minute by unseen eyes – I will then consider handing over your contract. Do you understand this?"

"T . . . Turkish? It . . . it . . . whatever. Are these civilized languages? I have never heard of them!"

"Primitive tongues. Another galaxy. Do you understand?"

"Y . . . y . . . yes."

"Ten days from today, at ten o'clock in the morning, Zanco will send a lorry for all this equipment. They know exactly where to deliver it. They have a pass for that place." I had verified with the captain of the
Blixo
his exact blastoff time. I had spoken to him about all arrangements.

"Zanco," I continued, "will bring an empty case for the operating table and put that one in it."

"B . . . b . . . but it has a case! A long box."

"Exactly." I was taking no chances of the Widow Tayl detaining him. "You are going to bore holes in the ends and fix it to lock from within. When Zanco comes, you pretend to be showing them what to take. And you
do
show them and you
do
get that operating table packed in the case they will bring. And then you will jump into that empty case and lock it from the inside and they will deliver you to the ship." He gaped. But it was a master stroke. He'd get loose from Tayl. Nobody would see him go aboard. I like things neat.

"C . . . can I pad the box inside? S . . . so I don't h . . . h . . . hit my h . . . h . . . head?" I was feeling indulgent. "Of course," I said. I pulled out a note to Captain Bolz. It just said, "This is him. Gris." I gave it to him.

"I guess . . . I guess there's a lot I don't know about secret operations," he confessed.