I went over it again. In a flash, I realized that the patrol crew knew something about Heller. Why not? They had spent fifteen weeks with him!
Bribed?
Yes, but I did not know if they had ever really reached Spiteos.
And furthermore I had no money to do any bribing!
I held my hands so tightly together the knuckles were bone white. That was one way to steady my nerves. I had to think!
Death Battalion. That rang a bell somewhere.
Then I remembered the part in the dream about bribing the Devil with counterfeit money.
Suddenly I laughed. My subconscious mind had been repressed by my censor. Deep in the primordial reptile brain which every sentient person has, I had worked it all out already! Because of a normal fear of erotic self-gratification, I had just not let myself know about it.
Although I had been afraid to go out, I was now more afraid to stay in.
I worked out an elaborate charade to account for my trip. I would tell Bawtch I was going hunting. This is my one extravagance: hunting trips. I like to kill small songbirds. One is likely to go anywhere to do that and nobody could trace me.
I got my hunting gear out of my office closet and with great nonchalance, sauntered out of the office, the game bag and needle blastrifle prominently displayed.
“Tell anybody who calls that I’ve gone hunting to recover my health,” I said loudly to Bawtch as I passed his cubicle.
“Good riddance,” I heard him mutter. And I knew my ruse had worked.
PART SEVEN
Chapter 1
The airbus was all cleaned out and polished up—Fleet cleaning materials. The driver had on a new uniform—he had even bathed. Heller’s influence, (bleep) him. I felt a twinge in my stomach.
“Glad you’re better,” said the driver.
I know sneers when I hear them. I said, in a cold voice, “Provocation Section!”
He closed the door and off we flew. No one had been hanging around outside. I am well trained on such things. We were not being tailed. I was not in instant danger. I sat back in some relief.
I was not without resources. By a lucky fluke six months before, I had been snooping about a brawl some high Apparatus officers were having. They are infrequent as they can get pretty vulgar and scandals have to be hushed up. It had been held in an old ramshackle hotel out in the country, one that had long gone to seed. It was surrounded by acres of dead shrubs and decayed trees. I was wearing one of those tiny lapel cameras. At the time, I had been disappointed in being passed over in rank promotion and I had been shopping around to see if I couldn’t get some embarrassing blackmail that might help my career.
With an attentive eye, I had seen a furtive figure slipping off into the shrubs and I followed. And what luck! A female was waiting on a hidden bench. The furtive figure slipped behind her. I had not been able to make it out at first. But from the squabble which followed, unheard above the din of the main party, the female had been waiting for some high officer and the furtive figure wasn’t him! She threatened to report the intruder. This may have terrified him or he may just have been awfully drunk. But he proceeded to rape her. I got several shots from a nearby bush. And then, the beauty of it, he took out a knife and cut her throat and silenced her once and for all. And I got several pictures of that.
There were some other possibles that evening. I ran off the whole batch myself in a lab. The camera used was very light sensitive and the pictures were quite good.
Then ensued the laborious process of sorting out who the principals were. Apparatus face files are a little hard to come by but, after a time, I got the pictures all connected up with names.
And wonder of wonders, I identified the woman as the mistress of the Commander of the Death Battalion! The male in the rape-murder shot turned out to be the Chief of the Provocation Section!
I first established that the Commander of the Death Battalion had not himself arranged it to get rid of an unwanted female. He actually was making covert inquiries. The matter never came out in the newssheets: the Apparatus frowns on that. But he had even gone as far as the bluebottles—Domestic Police—to get a list of confirmed rape-murderers.
Accordingly, one day when I was idle, I had drifted down to the Provocation Section office. The chief’s name was Raza Torr. He had been tagged several times by the bluebottles of Flisten on suspicion of rape-murder but there was no proof. He had finally been recruited to the Apparatus and had risen to the post of Chief of Provocation. I got him alone, gave him copies of the pictures—I had many others in a secret place—and told him, “You’re perfectly safe. In the course of duty I killed the fellow who took these and have the originals. They were not entered in the master data banks. I do not want any money”—I knew he was heavily in debt and couldn’t pay and would kill if he had to—“but I only want to be your friend. And as a friendly act, I wanted you to know I have safeguarded your reputation.” He hastily shredded the pictures. As a result, I practically own the Provocation Section. Nothing else I had shot would lead to promotion and this one wouldn’t either. So I had to settle for what I could get.
This section specializes in framing. When the government decides it wants to get somebody, it hands it over to the Provocation Section. They infiltrate gangs and encourage them to do ridiculously foolhardy crimes for which they can be arrested and executed. They get prostitutes to compromise fellows who might be dangerous and feed the scandal to the newssheets and destroy their lives. In other words, pretty standard police work. The bluebottles also do this kind of thing but not on the scale of the Apparatus which is mostly political.
Down on the River Wiel, where it spreads out onto mud banks, there is a sprawling, dilapidated expanse of warehouses. Some say they used to be fish warehouses when the river still had fish in it. Some are used by large businesses. And the public does not know that right in the middle of that muddle lies the Provocation Section, very masked.
My airbus flew along the turbulent brown river and then ducked into the tunnel leading to the section. I debarked and ran up the rickety stairs to the chief’s office.
He saw who it was and looked a bit hunted. I had used his services a time or two. He would not feel threatened. “I see you been promoted,” said Raza Torr, a bit sourly. He was a very slithery sort of fellow, keeps one hand hidden in a drawer when he talks to you.
And yes, I was wearing my promotion. My driver had suggested I sell it or get false stones put in it and sell the real ones but Lombar would have noticed, the way he sometimes yanks you close to him. It is far better to starve than to attract unwanted attention from Lombar Hisst. Starvation is less painful!
I greeted him quite affably. “Been meeting any nice girls lately?” It was a friendly thing to say. Anything to put him at his ease.
But, actually, he’s not a very friendly fellow. His hand went deeper in the drawer.
“What do you want?”
“Oh, just the run of the place for a bit.”
Sourly he buzzed for a clerk. “Give him what he wants,” said Raza Torr.
I followed the clerk. Behind me I heard the drawer slam. Raza Torr said, “(Bleep)!” He must have hurt his finger.
I knew exactly what I wanted. One of the favorite ploys of the Provocation Section consists of planting counterfeit money on people. It is a pretty good counterfeit. The casual public would never detect it. But a trained store clerk and every cashier with a detection machine can spot it at once. They usually just say to wait a moment while they get some change, step on a floor button connected to the Finance Police and in a couple minutes the passer is picked up, taken to the Finance Prisons and after some torture and a brief trial, is executed. It is really a nice, smooth operation and the State is rid of some malcontent or critic or rival. There is real power in those counterfeit bills!
We walked through the endless rows of costumes of every type and size, past the boot department and past many another accumulation of riches. They mostly get them from morg
ues, accidents and battlefields. They seldom clean them up and the stench is a bit strong even in the Apparatus. We went by the personal effects drawers, thousands of square yards of them containing every imaginable item from every imaginable place, mostly taken from the dead, all vital to make a Provocation Section agent seem authentic. I peeked in the wallet drawers as sometimes real money is left in them but some clerk had been there before me.
We walked two hundred yards through the weapons area where every criminal kind of crazy weapon conceivable can be found. They use them to equip “revolutionary forces” that will then attempt some crazy coup. Most of the weapons explode and that’s that. Quite clever, really. Only the knives can be trusted and even then you better look in the handles to make sure there is no explosive charge that triggers when the knife touches flesh.
Finally and at last we came to their “Bait Office.” It contains safes full of fakes: fake stones that will get somebody arrested, fake gold, fake identoplates that trigger a police alarm when used, even fake certificates that are sometimes handed out to real graduating students who might cause upset somewhere. All highly intelligent material.
And money! I stood right in front of the vast vault and gestured to the Bait Office clerk to open it. My escort said, “Give him what he wants.” And they opened it.
Truly, the stuff looks beautiful. “Toilet paper” is the Apparatus slang term for it. And looking into that vast vault and at those piles and piles of lovely golden notes, one can get quite euphoric even if he knows it’s all counterfeit.
Actually, I was so money-starved I sort of overdid it. I picked up quarter-notes and then threw them down as too petty. I picked up ones. Safe enough as who looks hard at a one.
But not too thick a pack as I had just so much room in my pockets. I grabbed some packs of fives, then tens, then twenties, fifties and hundreds. I ran out of pocket room.
“You must be trying to get a whole platoon killed off,” my escort said.
I thought that was a good idea, too.
Finally, I tried to seal my pockets. I couldn’t. So I got rid of most of the ones.
The Bait Office clerk was presenting his board for my identoplate. I waved him off. “Very secret operation.”
“It’ll start an investigation done on that scale,” said the Bait Office clerk.
“The chief said to give him what he wants. Must be somebody in disguise. Right?” The escort was backing up Raza Torr. Wise fellow.
I couldn’t resist overwhelming them. “Emperor,” I whispered.
“Well, he’s got enough rivals,” said the Bait Office clerk. “I hear Prince Mortiiy is making real headway over on Calabar. You using this to tag some of his lot?”
I frowned. It was the best ploy. It made him think he had come too close. He nodded wisely. But he said, “Don’t plant too many of those hundreds. They’re the ones that even bluebottles can spot. Mortiiy’s agents themselves could detect them and knock you off.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “Not a word of this to anyone, no records.”
“Right! We got to get rid of lice like that Mortiiy. Did you know he promised to abolish the Apparatus?”
My escort said, “Silly (bleepard). How can anyone run a government without an Apparatus?”
“Maybe you’ve guessed too far,” I said.
That put him in his place. But he was now anxious to please. “That uniform looks awfully chewed up. There were some General Services officers killed in a gas leak they were investigating last week. Didn’t hurt their uniforms a bit. Maybe we’ve got your size.”
They did have! It only smelled a little bit like gas. I changed. And while I was changing, I noticed a luggage item on a shelf. Being well trained, I knew what it was. It’s called a “magic bottom.” When an inspector opens it the interior rotates in such a way that he never detects he is always searching the same side.
“Take it along,” said my escort, quite friendly now.
I stuffed the counterfeit money in it and then, lacking something to make the rotation work—something to inspect—I took some cans of food off a shelf marked:
POISONED FOOD
and put them in. The Apparatus thinks of everything.
“Don’t offer me none of those counterfeits as a tip,” said the escort. “I’m a lot too young to die!”
I guffawed over it. A really good joke. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized he had been hinting for a tip in real money. That accounted for the sour way he let me out.
But then, I had other things on my mind. If that patrol craft crew was in Spiteos, they would soon be unable to testify to anyone. They would have given me the data I needed about Heller and they would soon thereafter be dead, if not from poisoned food, then from trying to pass counterfeit money to the guards.
One has to be thorough. One has to be neat in the Apparatus.
PART SEVEN
Chapter 2
We set off on our mission of mercy; and indeed, anyone would be better off dead than held in the dungeons of Spiteos. So it was no criminal act, I fully realized. It was even a friendly thing to do.
Besides, Heller would kill me if he knew that a Fleet crew had been kidnapped the same night he had been. Dead crews don’t blab, as my favorite Apparatus school instructor used to say.
Beyond all this, however, was the possibility that this crew knew something about Heller’s habits that would make it possible for me to get back in control of things. The craftleader had said so in the dream and, as psychology teaches you, dreams never lie.
My driver said, “I smell gas!” He was looking around, sniffing. He rolled a window down despite the heavy slipstream and smelled outside. He decided the smell was inside. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Smells like sewer gas and cadavers all mixed up. And I just cleaned up the car, too.”
I ignored him. We were just passing over the last edges of Government City and had not yet gone over the barrier mountains to the Great Desert. I wanted to get this magic bag fixed. I dumped it all out on the airbus floor.
Even though it was deadly counterfeit, the money sure was beautiful. Stacks of it! I piled it around in the airbus back, admiring that lovely gold paper.
“My Gods!” said my driver. “Did you hold up a Finance Office all by yourself?”
There had been awe and sudden respect in his voice, usually so absent. I was sorry I had to crush it. But it was necessary in case he got ideas of larceny himself. “You better leave this money alone,” I said. “Every credit of it is totally counterfeit.” I passed him a bill.
“Looks real,” he said, handing it back quickly, like it was poison. “Who you planning to kill off? The whole of Camp Endurance?”
That was none of his business and he knew it. So I began to arrange the money in stacks. But the more I looked at it, the less willing I was to simply give it away. Thriftiness is a trait.
I decided I had better not be going around with a wallet looking so empty. So I took a couple hundreds, a few fifties, a couple twenties, some fives and quite a few ones. My wallet looked nice and fat. Good for show, even though I could get killed for passing it. I put the wallet in my tunic where it felt very comfortable.
Then I studied the problem of buying information from the crew. I was just plain unwilling to part with very much of this money. It looked so real.
There is a toolbox compartment in the rear floor of an airbus. My driver, of course, had long since sold the tools and the hole was pretty big. Lifting the cover, I studied things out.
I made a firm decision. I removed the remaining ones and fives from the mass and put them in the magic bag. And then I put all the rest of that lovely looking, deadly money in the tool compartment and locked it. I had fought the battle of giving it away or keeping it and giving it away had lost! I put the thin stack of ones and fives in the hidden compartment of the magic bag. Then, with sudden inspiration, I also hid the poisoned food in it. I had just decided on a new course of bribery.
We were past t
he mountains now and I spent my time looking down. According to Lombar’s orders, there should be the burned-out wreck of a patrol craft in the Great Desert. The whitish expanses were white. The sun-dancers danced but not over any trace of a wreck. Never mind, I would first see if the crew had ever arrived at Spiteos and after that I could search for the wreck. Maybe the newssheets hadn’t heard of it: after all, they are just newssheets, mostly trash.
We landed at Camp Kill. The driver ground-wheeled along the cluttered streets of the slummy place and, at my direction, stopped at the brothel control office. I went in, carrying the magic bag.
The commandant of Camp Endurance might make a fortune out of the place but actually the superannuated females who run it don’t much care whether it runs or not. Sloppy. There was garbage lying all over the floors and the bulletin boards hadn’t been posted for years. The female in charge didn’t even have a desk.
She may have once been beautiful, now she looked like an executive. Four hundred pounds of fat slumped over the edges of a half-recline chair, wearing a dirty towel, she didn’t even look up until I stamped my foot.
“I want a mute for fortress bribery,” I said. They often take hill girls from other planets and cut out their larynx: they can’t speak Voltarian anyway. Only a prostitute that is mute can be passed through the tunnel. Others at Camp Kill might suspect what was in Spiteos but none must be able to talk about it. It was common enough to entice a prisoner with a woman if it was thought he would not talk under torture. A lot of riffraff will do anything in return for a female.
She looked at me with contempt. Then she put out a filthy hand. Her attitude was such that I decided she would be better off executed anyway. I got out my wallet and put a counterfeit fifty in her palm with a great show of reluctance.
Really, it was like shooting a blaster into a jelly bowl, the way she shattered. She reassembled the globs into an ingratiating smile. She crooned over the fifty. She was no trained cashier!
“I may need her for some time,” I said.
That had no bearing on it. She screeched in the direction of a hall and shortly a couple other old hags dragged out a young girl. Dirty, bedraggled, she was nevertheless fairly pretty. I checked the larynx: it had been removed. She stood there, beaten, dejected. From the back country of Flisten, I guessed, kidnapped on some government raid into the primitive country. She certainly did not look able to arouse anyone, pretty or not.