He left mournfully.
Heller sat down at the desk.
The cat had been following him around from the moment he had come in. It jumped up now and took its place underneath the desk lamp. It sat there studying him.
Heller said to the cat, “You picked the wrong guy to be responsible for.” He sounded beaten.
VICTORY!
I had won!
PR!
What a totally effective assassin’s tool! And how painful, too!
And better: nobody, neither the victim nor the public, ever knew where the bullets had come from!
Suddenly, I understood the power controls of Earth. So this was how even empires were broken and made. By the PRs. And then the PRs even wrote the history books!
In one deadly blast, Madison had stopped the mighty Heller cold. With a few lines of ink, based only on his imagination, Madison was directing the destinies not only of Earth but of Voltar! No wonder Bury considered him so dangerous!
The PRs were the true gods of this planet! Gods of wrath and misery. But gods nonetheless! What a weapon they wielded! What destruction they wrought! Magnificent!
PART THIRTY-THREE
Chapter 9
I had been so fascinated with the glorious weapon, PR, that I had not realized that time was passing, every instant of which might spell deadly danger to me. After all, I had not turned up at Miss Pinch’s last night. Also, Bury would not be pleased at all and might even send another phone-call team: I was in no condition to withstand the US Army Signal Corps, much less a flank attack by snakes.
It was getting on toward noon. I painfully dragged myself out of bed and tottered in the direction of Utanc’s room.
The suite’s side door was open! This had never happened before.
Scenting a new disaster with an experienced nose, I peered in.
Her room was empty!
No trunks. Nothing in the closet or drawers.
She was gone!
I didn’t know what plane!
I didn’t have a ticket!
I had only eighty or ninety dollars! Nowhere near enough to get me out of New York.
Then I realized she would probably call when she had picked up the tickets. Of course, that was it.
My hands were bandaged. So was much of my body. It hurt to move. But I knew I had better pack. Struggling and fumbling, I went to work, screaming slightly every now and then.
It was very exhausting. Before I could strap anything up, I had to rest. I sank down in a chair.
There were newspapers scattered about the floor. My jaded eye landed on a news story. I was surprised that the paper contained any other news than the Whiz Kid’s capers. The story said:
IRS SUSPECT COMMITTED
Arginal P. Pauper was today committed to Walnut Lodge Nut House by Internal Revenue Service routine desk-agent order.
Pauper is alleged to have failed to file an income tax return.
The IRS order also required that Pauper be electric shocked, given a prefrontal lobotomy and thereafter tortured for life in the institution.
“He needed professional help,” the IRS spokesman said, “and only our psychiatrists can give him that.
“He claimed he had spent the sixty cents in question on stamps to mail his return. However, all returns not sent by registered mail and delivered by a Rolls-Royce painted blue with yellow stripes are, of course, wastebasketed, so the defense is preposterous.”
Pauper’s widow and orphans have been ground into meatballs to pay the tax penalties.
IRS NY District Chief Stoney T. Blood issued a public statement: “IRS über alles! And let that be a lesson to you, you dumb suckers!”
Over 300,000,000 Americans are said to be tax delinquent each year.
I knew it was PR. I knew it was simply a planted story to frighten people into paying their taxes. But in spite of knowing all that, it scared me spitless!
Having already seen that day the havoc PR could wreak, it stood my hair on end!
I had no more than finished reading it when the phone rang.
Thank heavens! It must be Utanc to tell me what plane. I answered.
A gruff voice said, “Inkswitch?”
I was so startled, I said, “Inkswitch.”
“Good. This is the IRS New York Delinquency Office. Just a routine verification that you are there.” He hung up.
My hair was not only standing up, it was crackling!
Oh, I had to get out of here! Three years in a Federal pen with homos even worse than Miss Pinch would make a brain operation welcome!
I locked all my suitcases. Then I noticed that I had forgotten to get dressed. I didn’t have the energy to unstrap everything. Lying in the wastebasket was the suit I had worn at the last visit to Miss Pinch. Frantically, I pulled it on.
I sneezed!
It stunk violently of red pepper, Tabasco and mustard!
There was no time. I would have to take what clue I had. Utanc had said a four o’clock plane. I would flee to the airport!
I called down for a bellboy and a cart and told them to get a cab at the door. This might be a close thing. Police always verify if you’re in before they knock down the place with battering rams, so IRS would, of course, do even worse!
The bellboy piled my luggage on his hand truck. He pushed it to the front of the elevator door, waiting for the car to come up. Somebody must be coming up in that lift!
Some sixth sense told me to be cautious. The stairwell door was close to hand. I faded into it, holding it open a crack.
The elevator arrived and the door opened.
Two of the toughest-looking men I have ever seen stepped out into the penthouse foyer! They had black hats, gray overcoats, huge shoulders and great black mustaches! Mean!
They knocked like thunder on the sitting-room door!
Oh, thank Gods for Apparatus training! I fled down the stairwell, unmindful of the agony every movement caused.
Speeding, I went down all thirty stories of the hotel!
I burst into the lobby.
The doorman recognized me. He beckoned. The cab was sitting there.
My bellboy and baggage had already arrived. It was being put in the cab. So slow, so slow!
My eye was pinned on the elevator doors in the lobby.
In desperation, I waved a ten-dollar bill at the bellboy.
He stopped to make sure it wasn’t counterfeit!
The manager was coming out. I thought it was to tell me the bill wasn’t paid. Instead, he shook me by the hand and said, “Congratulations on your leaving, Mr. Inkswitch. Please use another hotel when you return.” I was so relieved to realize Utanc had paid the bill.
The delay was nearly fatal.
The two tough guys came out of the elevator!
I leaped into the cab and screamed, “John F. Kennedy International Airport!”
The driver sped away.
I was looking back.
I had beaten them!
We battered our way through congested traffic. We plunged down into the Queens Midtown Tunnel. We emerged into the flowing traffic of Route 495. I looked back. For a moment I could see the UN fading. I was making it! What a relief!
Wait. Many cars behind us. A gray vehicle was threading its way closer! I stared with my face pressed more closely to the glass.
THE TWO TOUGH MEN!
Not only that, they seemed to have recognized me! One was waving frantically for us to pull over and stop.
I didn’t have much money. But I leaned forward. “A twenty-dollar tip if you lose that gray car!”
“Fifty dollahs,” said the cabby.
“Fifty dollars!” I said.
We sped forward. We swayed and tire-screeched around trucks. We cut desperately in front of cars whose brakes shrieked as they stamped down to miss us.
Every sway was agony to my tortured and bruised body. Gods, would I be glad to get out of New York—if I made it!
We got onto Woodhaven Boulevard. We roared through
the wintry Forest Park. We rocketed past Kew Gardens. We blasted by Aqueduct Race Track.
We came screaming into the passenger terminal of John F. Kennedy Airport. I looked anxiously on the back trail. They still might come. I paid the cabby. I then had only eighteen dollars left!
“What airline?” said a black porter with a cart.
“I don’t know,” I said.
He was loading my baggage on his small truck. “Well, you c’n take yo’ choice, then. They’s Pan Am. They’s TWA. But if’n it’s TWA, we bettah git anothah cab ’cause this is Pan Am. Now, me, f’um mah study of the crashes . . .”
I thought fast. Four o’clock. Maybe only one plane left at four. “What goes to Rome or London or someplace at four?”
“Well, ah thinks they is one fo’ Rome at fo’. But if you ain’t too partickler, me, I’d go to Trinydad wheh it is mo’ wahm.”
“Rome. Take me to that counter.”
He did. It was long, long before plane time.
“Inkswitch?” said the clerk. “We don’t have any reservation in that name. I will call central . . .”
I wasn’t listening. I had been casting glances back toward the door.
THERE THEY WERE!
I hysterically threw three one-dollar bills at the porter. “Take care of my baggage!”
I fled.
Darting through a troop of Girl Scouts, colliding with a woman carrying a Pekingese who gave me a shove, I was propelled into the midst of an Olympic ski team. It was a lifesaver. They gave me such a vigorous rejection that I went like a bowling ball into a crowd of priests. The confusion was so great, all I had to do was keep rolling and I was in through the door of a men’s washroom.
I hastily got a coin out and with an agonized sigh of relief I was safely inside a john.
I sat there for a bit. I hurt so much, I forgot to pull my feet up. Then I remembered the technique and did so. It was just in time.
Two pairs of heavy boots!
The two tough men were coming down the line of locked toilets, looking under the doors!
They didn’t see me.
They were in a hurry.
They went on.
Only then could I permit myself to suffer. The bruises were just one big general pain from the cab ride. I was sure the cuts were bleeding again from the bowling ball trip. What one had to go through just to execute his simple duties!
Stifling a sneeze, I abruptly remembered that I had forgotten to phone the New York office and get Raht to turn on the 831 Relayer. Without it, I would be blind about Heller.
I had lots of time before four o’clock. The problem was how to get out of this place and to a phone without being spotted.
Getting brave, I left the john cubicle.
There was a man, a very big man, over by a wash bowl. He had a rather extensive kit spread out and he was shaving with an old blade razor.
He was facing sideways to the entrance door. He had hung his hat—a sort of hunting hat with two bills front and back—and his coat—a black-and-white checkered mackinaw—on a hook quite close to the door.
Being of a cunning frame of mind, I knew that he would shortly wash his face. He would have soap in his eyes for a moment. I waited. Sure enough, over he bent.
Quick as a flash, I had the hat and coat. Quicker, I slid out of the washroom, expertly getting them on at the same moment.
The odd, red cap was awfully big. It fitted easily over my own hat. The loud-checked mackinaw was huge, more like an overcoat on me. Adequate disguise!
I peered cautiously about. Yes! There they were, the two tough men! But they were facing the other way, looking along lines of people.
I got to a coin-change machine and converted ten dollars to change. I certainly was low on cash.
Adequately masked by the hat and coat, I slid into a glass-enclosed phone kiosk. I dialed the New York office.
“Put Raht on the phone,” I said.
They had some idiot clerk from Flisten on their reception: I could tell by the crazy way he had of pronouncing his S’s: He made them into Z’s. “I am zorry. The poor Raht iz in the hozpital ztill. Complicationz. The pneumonia iz not rezponding to the penizillin. Hiz condition iz critical. Whom zhall I zay called?”
I was furious! I was zo zizzling, I znapped ztraight over into gutter Flizten. An idiot like that couldn’t hope to understand Standard Voltarian, much less plain English. “Vacations! Vacations! That’s all you people ever think about!”
“O Demonz of the green abyzz!” he said in Flisten. “Thiz muzt be Officer Griz!” He sounded scared. That was better!
“Now listen to me,” I snarled at him in Flisten. “You order Raht to stop faking and handle the Empire State and make him report in or I’ll have him filled full of red Tabasco Signal Corps! And listen, you idiot, if I ever catch you speaking Flisten again on an Earth phone line I’ll make you listen to A Night on Bare Mountain with rolling pins! Got it?”
He had it. It was the most terrible curse I could think of. He was gibbering!
I hung up, feeling a bit better.
Madison! I ought to call Madison and tell him what a magnificent job he had done. A PR triumph! And also that I was leaving. Then Bury wouldn’t know where to send the snakes.
I inserted the coins and hit the buttons. Amazing! It was Madison himself who answered. “Thank you for calling right back, Mr. Underslung. What progress have you made in getting the Whiz Kid an Oscar for underhanded driving?”
“No, no,” I sneezed. “This is Tabasco Smith, I mean Mr. Smith. Madison, I absolutely had to call and tell you what a magnificent job you have done. You are a wonder. Thank Gods for PR and please tell Mr. Bury I have gone off on a long trip to spy on the Signal Corps for Miss Agnes.”
“Job done?” he said, sounding mystified. “But this campaign isn’t over, Smith, far from it! It has a long, long way to go yet to achieve lasting image. Wait until you see tomorrow’s papers! They will say that he made so much money betting against himself in the race that he will give the bribe in full to the Kansas farmers.”
There it was again, the thing which I hadn’t understood before. “What’s all this about Kansas farmers?”
“You don’t get that?” he said, amazed. “Good heavens, you surely are a long way from professional. My orders are to make his name a household word and to make him immortal. Since the image of ‘the man who started World War III’ was ruined, I have had to take a different tack. The one I am working on now is ‘Jesse James.’ He was a famous outlaw who fought the railroads in Kansas by robbing trains and gave the loot to the farmers. He is one of the great American folk heroes. Deathless. So if I can give Wister a Jesse James-type image, all will be well. It can change, though. PR is a fluid subject, Inkswitch, and above all we’ve got to keep that front page no matter how many natural cataclysms get in the way. If I try very hard and stay with the fundamentals of professional PR, the Whiz Kid will make it, but it will take time. Now if you will get off my phone, I’d appreciate it. I’m short-handed today since Hoodward was shot at the airport by Faustino’s men and Ted Tramp’s wife is having a baby. I’m expecting calls from various racing associations to get the Whiz Kid debarred from every track in America so we can come back the next day and claim they are just terrified to race against him. And for the day after that, I have to get riots organized by those who lost bets and riots take a lot of advance time. So I need all my phones!”
Yes, I sure could see he was beautifully busy. “Please tell Mr. Bury,” I sneezed, “that both the Signal Corps and Miss Agnes have snake detectors. Goodbye.”
I hung up. Well, that was out of the road. Did I need to call the Security Chief at Octopus and tell him I would not be around? Then I remembered that anything connected with me came up blank on the computer and they couldn’t tell whether I was working or not. And Miss Pinch might have a bug on that line. Also, IRS might trace the call. In fact, they might be tracing me right now. . . .
SCRAPE!
The door of t
he phone kiosk flew open.
I cowered back, but not in time!
It was the owner of the hat and coat!
He loomed like a mountain!
A huge paw seized me!
I was yanked ferociously out of the kiosk.
I saw a fist cocked in midair.
WHAM!
An anvil seemed to hit me in the eye!
Down I went on the floor. THUD went my head against the edge of the phone booth!
PLOWIE!
Into the air around me went a cloud of stars.
The sound wasn’t from the stars. It was from a boot in my side.
He tore the mackinaw off of me. He grabbed the hat.
THUNK!
He kicked me again in the side.
I shut my eyes tight. I was waiting for the next kick. It didn’t come. I opened my eyes.
TWO PAIRS OF HEAVY BOOTS! Right by my face!
The two tough men had caught up with me!
I was done for!
I looked up. One bent over and yanked me to my feet.
The other was reaching into his pocket. Gun? Handcuffs?
The first one said, “Are you Achmed Ben Nutti?”
Oh, my Gods. At Pan Am I had asked for reservations in the name of Inkswitch. Achmed Ben Nutti was the United Arab League name I had been traveling under and had passports for.
I was too weak to fight. Cunning was in order. “Yes, I am Achmed Ben Nutti and I have diplomatic status! You can’t arrest me!”
“Arrest you?” he said. “No, no, Comrade. We are from the Bolshoi Travel Agency. We have been trying hard to catch you and give you your ticket!”
He was dusting me off and it made a cloud of mustard-pepper-Tabasco odors fly into the air. We both sneezed.
“Here are all your flight papers,” said the other tough-looking man. “We have already found and checked your baggage aboard. You had better hurry, Comrade. That’s your flight they’re calling now.”
“He doesn’t seem to be able to walk,” said the other, sneezing again. “Let’s carry him over to the first-class gate and get them to let us through. We can dump him aboard.”
We went through the rat maze of detectors, past the cooperative attendants, down a gangway and into the side of a ship. We were the last ones aboard. I had almost missed the plane! It evidently was an earlier one!