He showed her a card. “Who does this look like?” he asked.
I could see the back. It said:
Girl, English
Blito-P3 (Earth, Europe).
She looked very interested. But I felt she would have been interested in anything he showed her, even had it been a blank sheet of paper.
She said, “That looks like a farm girl from the highlands of Atalanta province, Manco. My people come from that area, you know. They had some estates there a few hundred years ago—until they lost them, that is.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Heller. “I was born in Atalanta province. In the capital, you know: Tapour.”
And they got into one of these “Did you know Jem Vis?” and “Do you remember the old lady Blice?” and “Is the courthouse still there?” interspersed with “You do?” and “What do you knows?” and “It’s a small universe” that went on and on. They were fellow denizens of Manco, all right! Old Manco reunion week! It went on and on.
Finally they ran out of that, at least for the moment, and Heller got back to his picture cards. He held up one that said on the back:
Old Man, Polynesian
Blito-P3 (Earth, Oceania).
“One of the boat people from the harbor of Dar?” she said.
“Now this one,” said Heller. The back said:
Film Star, Female
American, Blito-P3
(Earth, Americas).
“That isn’t your sister,” said the Countess. Heller showed her another. The back said:
Male, Caucasian
Blito-P3 (Earth).
“Is this some member of your family? It looks dimly like an uncle I had.” She pretended, only pretended, to be severe. “What is this, Jettero Heller? Are you trying to tell me you’ve just been to Manco? But those pictures are not three-dimensional and their color is poor. Oh, I place them now. They’re anthropology recognition cards. Give them to me!” She playfully snatched them out of his hand and looked at their backs.
She examined them a bit, turning them back and forth. “Blito-P3?”
“You remember an old fable?” said Heller. And with no prompting, he rattled off Folk Legend 894M, word for word in its entirety.
“Wait,” said the Countess. She was thinking hard. Then she picked up her canister and began to swing it back and forth to get a rhythm time. Then she started singing in a rather throaty but pleasant voice. But she did manage to give it a childish pronunciation:
If ever from life you need fly,
Or a king has said loved ones must die,
Take a trip
In a ship
That will bob, dive and dip,
And find a new home in the sky.
Heller joined in:
Bold Prince Caucalsia,
There you are on high.
We see you wink,
And we see you blink,
Far, far, far above the Mo-o-o-o-n!
They both laughed, pleased with their duet of the nursery song. They must have learned it as children.
The Countess Krak said, “What star really was it that we used to point to and call ‘Prince Caucalsia’?”
“Blito,” said Heller.
“You mean he really got there?” said the Countess, delighted.
Now, in my opinion, an engineer trying to get into historical anthropology, a subject far out of his line, can be awfully wide of the mark.
Heller turned to me. “Why do they call this race type Caucasian?” and he threw down the card. “You know the planet. Is there some continent called Caucasian?”
“I think it’s just a general race type,” I said. I thought. Then I remembered. Heller does not have a monopoly on memory and I had had to really grind about Blito-P3. “There’s a Caucasus district in southern Russia. That’s just north of Turkey. It’s a sort of border between the two continents, Asia and Europe. But I don’t think that’s what type the name means. Maybe the people came from there and maybe not, but there is a Caucasoid race that migrated around and spread out pretty far. You find them all over the place now. The type has minimal skin pigmentation, straight or curly hair, high-bridged, narrow noses. They have a high frequency of what they call Rh-negative blood type and the presence of a special blood element: I think you must have been looking at it today.”
“All right,” said Heller. “Is there an ‘Atalanta’? A country or something?”
I thought about it. I had to go over and get a reference book out of the pile, a thing they call an “encyclopedia.” I read it aloud.
“Atlantis, also called Atalantis and Atalantica, legendary island in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. Its civilization was thought to be very advanced. It was supposed to have been overwhelmed by the seas.”
“Aha,” said Heller. “Whatever Prince Caucalsia founded got destroyed and the people had to migrate elsewhere.”
“Heller,” I said patiently, “an engineer is not an anthropologist!”
“Oh, but they are!” said the Countess. “They work out the whole geological cycle of a planet and to do that they have to know fossils and bones!” She was very prim about it. I realized that a certain person had been studying like mad!
“Well, maybe so,” I said. And it might be true. “But a couple of names don’t make a historical fact. Just coincidence! There are humanoids all over the place. There is no reason to believe that your Prince Caucalsia, or whatever his name was, put some races down on Blito-P3. I can show you fifteen planets where there are inhabitants that look like you or her or me.”
“The poles shifted,” said Heller, “probably got relocated in sea areas, the ice caps melted and it drowned the colony out. Poor Prince Caucalsia.”
“The poor fellow,” said the Countess.
“So that’s what must have happened,” said Heller. “Well! We better make awful sure it doesn’t happen again and drown his descendants, too!”
“That would be a shame,” said the Countess.
I should have had my wits examined. Here they were agreeing on the mission! And such was my dogged devotion to fact—except where it concerns affairs of the Apparatus, of course—that I just couldn’t stand this much stupid sentimentality based on total illogics. “But Heller, we don’t have any data, not real solid data, that Prince Caucalsia of Atalanta, Manco, colonized an island on Earth and called it Atlantis! Countrymen of yours weren’t part of that migration!”
Heller was looking at me with his eyes slightly closed. “It’s more poetic that way,” he said.
Oh, my Gods! Was this an engineer? A hard-minded, rock and metal and explosives engineer?
“Besides,” said Heller, piling illogic upon illogic, “she likes it.”
The Countess Krak nodded very emphatically.
Conversation had ceased. I thought at first it was because I had put my foot wrong with them. They were just sitting there looking at me. Gradually I got the feeling that I was an unnecessary part of the scenery.
“Are there any empty cubicles along the passageway where you could sleep?” Heller said to me.
A shock ran through my head. If one of the sporadic guard patrols did a room check tonight, three heads would roll, including mine.
There weren’t any other rooms cleaned or made up, though almost all of them were empty.
They continued to stare at me. In fact, they almost pushed me out with their eyeballs. I closed the door behind me and stood in the dim passageway.
The two guards were sitting to the right and left of the entrance, hunkered down against the floor, smoking puffsticks. I could tell by the smell they were an expensive brand. Money had been passed out and I wondered if Snelz would remember my cut.
I leaned against the wall and after a while absent-mindedly sat down. There was no moral indignation involved in my reaction: as you know, it is customary with many of the Voltarian Confederacy races for a male and female to live together two or three years before they get married. No, it was the danger of the thing. They say t
here is a very narrow line between a brave man and a fool. In my estimation, their daring had entered the world of (bleep) foolishness.
It was at that moment I realized that I had had them both agreeing in principle that the mission should be done and I recognized I had taken no advantage of it. Was it the pink sparklewater?
I heard some very small sounds coming from that room behind the closed door. Whispers? My eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom of the passageway and I looked toward the two guards. I would have expected to have found lascivious expressions on their faces, the look soldiers get when they hear about sex. But no, these two guards looked more like the relatives of the bride and groom, serious, hopeful. They sure had their ears glued to that door. They were communicating with each other by looks.
Inside, chairs scraped, plainly heard above the soft music. Then a long silence. A buckle clinked on the floor.
In espionage there are four types of operation: overt, clandestine, covert and secret. Those two in there apparently had no inkling of even common sense. They were engaged in something secret and they had it graded overt! They hadn’t even turned up the music to muffle the sounds.
My imagination was running amok on what they were doing. The guards, from their looks, had some idea of the progress being made in there: they were sort of reassuring each other.
There was a creak of the bed. Then some more creaks. The soft music played on. Knowing what the Countess had done to that special agent that had touched her, it would not have surprised me to have had to rush in there with a stun gun to save the last of Heller if I could. I felt there was no predicting the Countess.
Then her voice, plainly heard, “You will have to be careful with me, darling. I have never had a man before.”
A reassuring murmur from Heller. Who was he to reassure? By his record, he had never had a female before! But races do continue and babies do get born. I stiffened in alarm. What if he made her pregnant! But I relaxed, we would be long gone by then.
There were rhythmic creakings then. They went on and on and on.
Then the Countess’s voice, “Oh, Jet.” She repeated it. She said it faster and faster, “Oh, Jet, oh Jet, oh Jet, oh Jet. Oh JET!” And there was a shuddering moan from Heller.
The two guards instantly leaped to their feet, totally silent! They shot their arms above their heads the way people do in a bullet ball game after a winning hit. They beat their fists together and jumped up and down. They had ecstatic expressions on their faces. They turned to each other and enthusiastically shook hands. And all without the tiniest sound! My, they were pleased!
At length the guards sat down and lit new puffsticks. The soft music flowed on inside.
Once more the bed began to creak in rhythm. It went on and on. Then the same shout and groans inside. The same performance from the guards.
Quiet once more. It came to me that those two in there were young and very strong and very much in love and that this was quite likely going to go on most of the night.
Another thumping distracted me. It seemed to be right under me. I looked down. Good Gods, I was sitting on the dolly box and the zitab snake had come to life!
I leaped clear across the passageway!
The guards snickered.
I went into another cubicle. I lit the lights. It was dirty and a mess. It didn’t even have a bed. Wearily, I closed the door, turned off the glowplates and with my cap for a pillow, lay down on the floor to get some sleep.
Some writer has said that all the planet loves lovers. It might include the guards, but it sure did not include one Soltan Gris.
What was going to become of Mission Earth?
PART FOUR
Chapter 6
If the “rescue of Prince Caucalsia’s colony” was so important, Jettero Heller and the Countess Krak certainly showed no signs of it. It wasn’t that they, like me, considered the possibility that there had ever been a Prince Caucalsia to be farfetched and even preposterous. They had other things on their minds. And following more or less the same routine—daytime study in the training hall but nights in my room—they let one day follow another, beautifully happy in a world of their own.
My urgency to get Heller off Voltar was growing. And there were things to get done that weren’t getting done. One of them consisted of getting him operated on to install a “body bug”: unless I could keep track of his every minute on Earth, I would be unable to control him; that required that a device be put into him that he would not suspect; and that required that he be gotten onto a cellular surgery table. But as soon as I started planning this step, I got ill again: not violent all the time but very nagging and very uncomfortable. I was miserable.
If I could get him moved into town, I might be able to find a cellologist and get to work on him. But get him out of this fortress and away from the Countess Krak? All systems stop!
Five days went by. The shadow of Lombar seemed to loom closer and closer. Yet I had not yet come up with a single idea.
One afternoon I heard that Lombar was going to spend the next couple days at Endow’s palatial country estate. He would be secretly absent. The next morning I used the fact to pretend I had to see him in his office. Of course, he wouldn’t be there and, of course, the clerks would not be allowed to tell me so: I could use the pretended wait to get a crack at the master console.
The old criminal clerk would have suspected his mother of high treason had she even ventured to say “hello” to him. So when I sat down at the button board, he went into his usual flap. But, as he did not dare say when Lombar was expected and I pretended to believe Lombar would be back any moment, the old clerk was blocked.
I wanted to know if I had really been appointed. So I slid my identoplate into the slot and fed in my own name and punched,
PRESENT POSTS?
And the screen rattled off:
SECTION CHIEF SECTION 451 ON VOLTAR;
HANDLER FOR SPECIAL AGENT/AGENTS OF MISSION EARTH;
IN CHARGE, MISSION EARTH;
INSPECTOR GENERAL OVERLORD ALL OPERATIONS AND ACTIONS OF BLITO-P3 FOR THE EXTERIOR DIVISION AND COORDINATED INFORMATION APPARATUS.
The screen might be blinking but I really blinked! Four paychecks! Lombar really was doing me up beautifully. And as he said, there would be all the kickbacks and commissions and rake-offs. I could see myself coming out of this quite well off: maybe a cottage in the Vaux Mountains, maybe even a hunting preserve!
Then the computer rapidly added a string of letters saying,
ALL APPOINTMENTS MADE AT THE INSISTENCE
OF SAID OFFICER SOLTAN GRIS
ROUTINELY RATIFIED BY THE CLERICALSECTION.
It puzzled me for a bit and I sat there staring at it. It sort of meant that neither Endow nor Lombar Hisst had forwarded or ratified the appointments. But it made me totally responsible personally for everything that went on anywhere concerning Blito-P3. A little overwhelming. But I brightened: I was, in effect, in total charge of Earth!
The screen had begun to blink a warning that I was about to be cut off due to delay in use.
“You going to pay for the chairs you wear out?” snarled the old clerk.
I hastily pushed the “Deliver Copy” button and “10” to keep the machine busy for a moment and also to have the sheet to use as authority pending the routine delivery of the appointments on other channels.
What could I do with this thing to help my dilemma? Maybe if I fed Heller data about Blito-P3 he would get more interested.
As soon as the printer had finished spitting out ten copies of the appointments, I punched in,
BLITO-P3 PRINCE CAUCALSIA.
The screen promptly said,
IN THE MISTS OF TIME, FOLK LEGEND 894M.
Well, (bleep), I knew that.
“Console time,” said the old criminal clerk, “is charged double to idiots.”
I hastily tried to think of something else. Ah! I punched in,
ROYAL SUCCESSIONS. PRETENDERS.
The machine said
,
REALLY? YOU REALLY WANT 125,000 YEARS OF THREATS TO THRONE?
I hastily punched in,
FORTRESS OF DAR, MANCO AND ATALANTA, MANCO.
The screen started to roll up lists so fast I couldn’t follow them. Good Gods, had there been that many revolts and pretenders in just one area of one planet? I remembered the poet’s quote, “Shot full of holes is the head that wears a crown.” I couldn’t track with the speed frames. I pushed “Deliver Copy.” The machine promptly began to spit out paper. Yards of it.