Mission: Earth "Death Quest" (21 page)

The Countess Krak patted at her moist face with a

handkerchief and took the drink gratefully.

Heller sat down. "And how goes the training on young Rockecenter?"

"Well," she said, "I
am
making progress. I've got him so he'll bathe in water instead of mud. He's stopped making grunting noises and scratching his back against posts."

"Well, that's something anyway," said Heller. "But aren't you using a hypnohelmet? I should think you could do it with that pretty fast."

"I'm trying to train him so he doesn't become a robot," said the Countess. "So I have to preserve his basic personality. But so far, he won't do anything a pig won't do. He just plain won't sit at a table and let any other diner have anything to eat-he keeps pushing them away with his nose. At first I just thought it was early behavior environmental influence, but now I'm afraid I'm up against heredity-a family trait."

"Well, you're making progress. We could leave soon."

The Countess Krak frowned. "That's the trouble, really. He won't abandon his pigs."

"Oh, is that all?" said Heller. "Bang-Bang, come over here." Bang-Bang came over and hunkered down on the grass, nursing a tall Scotch and ice the stewardess must have given him. "Now, why don't I just have Bang-Bang here call Izzy and tell him to rent half a dozen pig trucks?"

"I'm afraid they're county pigs" said the Countess.

"Well, we could have Bang-Bang tell Izzy to just buy them. And we could also have Izzy buy a pig farm up near New York, maybe across the river in New Jersey. I smell pigs every time I go by there."

The Countess said, "Dear, that's a beautiful solution. But let's not bother poor Izzy: he gets so upset

when he can't get things exactly like you want them. The phone is working again so why can't Bang-Bang just make the calls right from here?"

"Well, okay," said Heller. "You're the captain on this voyage. But if we short-circuit Izzy, how do we pay?"

"Why," said the Countess Krak, brightly, "just put the pig trucks and the pigs and the farm on my Squeeza credit card, of course."

Bang-Bang leaped up. "It's wonderful to have that card. What would we do without it? I'll get on the phone at once."

Angrily, I thrust the viewer away. That woman! That fiend! Mudur Zengin would get down to the last pennies of the cash left in his hands and then that half-million-dollar Swiss certificate would be forfeit. Maybe it had already happened!

She was just doing it to ruin me.

They would be coming north now.

I must get on with the next item of my program without delay!

PLAN BEFORE YOU ATTACK.

I must have steel jaws open and ready to snap. And those jaws must have teeth!

I went over my basic outline. Apparently I was a little bit out of sequence. If one is going to attack, one must have something to attack
with.
It is no good, I discovered, to do a plan to use a tank and then have no

tank to gather. So I had better pay some attention to "4. GATHER WEAPONS BEFORE YOU ATTACK."

All right, what weapons could I gather? I looked around. I didn't have a tank. This was going to require real brains.

My eye happened to land on an old, decayed scrap of newspaper some cockroaches were towing possessively across the floor. I took it away from them. It said "...
'S MORALITY IN QUESTION."

It was an omen.

MORALITY!

I well knew Voltar customs were different. The tremendous life expectancy there meant that one had to be pretty sure who he or she was marrying before taking the plunge: otherwise one could be stuck with an unsuitable partner for a century and a half. So it was quite usual for a man and woman to live together for anything up to two years before tying the final knot. The only way you could get a "divorce" in the Confederacy was by finding the other partner guilty of bigamy or adultery and getting him executed, as the penalty for these was death. So marriage was a totally fatal step.

But Earth customs, I knew, were quite different. One was expected to take the plunge without any data at all on the other person. They frowned heavily at loose living, no matter how much they practiced it.

It was a weapon.

Instantly, I shook the cockroaches out of my clothes, dressed and rushed to 42 Mess Street.

Madison was sitting at his desk. His sincere and earnest face was somewhat overcast with cloud. I realized I had arrived in the nick of time.

"How is it going?" I said.

"Smith," said Madison gloomily, "we're not getting

front page the way we should. The Whiz Kid went into hiding in Kansas. It was a mistake."

"What's this fixation on Kansas?" I said.

"That's Jesse James country. We're still following the Jesse James image pattern, of course."

"What's the state of morality in Kansas?" I said.

"Morality? That is the Bible Belt. Bunch of hypocrites. Very hot on morality."

"Good," I said. "Now open your ears, Madison. The Whiz Kid is leading an immoral life. He is living with a woman to whom he is not married!"

Madison looked at me and blinked. Then he cupped his chin upon a palm and thought. Suddenly he smiled like the sun coming through the clouds on a stormy day. "I think you may have an idea there, Smith. Not very pro. Not polished, of course. But it is definitely a germ."

I didn't want to hear any more about germs. I left quickly.

I went back to the wino hotel. I am sure any self-respecting spider gloats when he has spun a web to trap flies coming his way. I turned my viewers on.

For some time I only got a flare on Heller's screen. Then suddenly it went off. He had alighted from the land yacht.

They were heading north!

The view I had was of the very service station where the gawky country boy had taught Heller all about cars on his original trip to Washington.

And there was the gawky country boy himself, staring wide-eyed at the huge land yacht.

Then suddenly the gawky country boy came forward and looked closer at Heller. "YOU!" he cried and stood standing there with his jaw dropped.

"Hello," said Heller. "How's business?"

"Good golly! Whereja get this big motor home? That's the flashiest vehicle I ever see!"

Heller said, "I think my girl stole it."

"Gosh!" said the gawky country boy in awe. "You look like you made it real good!" Then he looked behind the land yacht, his eye sweeping down the long length of the convoy which had now pulled off the highway and stood waiting their turns, evidently, at the pump. "Who are all these other people?"

"Call them my mob," said Heller.

"Holy smokes! You mean you're a big-time gangster now with a mob and everything?"

Heller said, "You got diesel for all these trucks?"

"You said it."

"And some water for the pigs?"

"PIGS?" cried the gawky country boy, staring at the convoy.

"Sure," said Heller. "We're taking them for a ride. They're squealers."

Bang-Bang's voice as he approached: "What's this about gangsters?"

Heller said to the boy, "Let me introduce Bang-Bang Rimbombo, the most notorious car bomber in New York."

"Gosh!" said the boy, pumping Bang-Bang's hand. But the rental trucks down the line were honking their horns. The boy hastily began to refuel the land yacht. Bang-Bang gave him a hand. In a voice that barely reached Heller, Bang-Bang said, to the boy, "When did you meet the boss?"

"Years ago," the boy said. "I'm the one who gave him his start. And look at him now!"

The Countess Krak came into Heller's view. She was rummaging in her purse. I realized in horror what

she was about to take out: to pay for all these hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel, she would use my Squeeza credit card!

I turned the viewers off hastily.

But never mind, flies. The web is spread and you are flying straight into it.

The attack might be slow but I was sure it would be deadly. I knew Madison. I had seen the gleam in his eye. This would be a kill!

Sure enough, the very next morning, Madison had front page:

WHIZ KID SURRENDERS TO KANSAS POLICE

EXTRADITION

PROCEEDINGS

WAIVED

WHIZ KID TO BE

ARRAIGNED IN NEW JERSEY

After hectic weeks of hiding from the clutches of the law, Wister today surrendered...

I knew that Madison was just setting his stage. While I was not quite sure what he meant to do, I had a return of confidence.

Both Heller's and Krak's viewers were functional, now that they were within a two-hundred-mile range.

They were walking around a farm, apparently in New Jersey since the country was very flat. Yes! Krak looked across a stretch of water and there was the skyline of New York City!

Rockecenter's son, Delbert John II, was racing about the rental trucks, shouting "Hello," and "You're here," and "Look at your new home" to the pigs inside. Then he sped excitedly to some concrete buildings, raced in, raced out. He cupped his hands against his mouth and made a sort of squealing noise and gave a signal to the trucks.

Apparently the drivers dropped gangways, for here came an absolute torrent of pigs!

Like a traffic cop, the boy was shunting them into the pens. Finally, he closed some gates, waved to the pigs inside and came beaming over to Heller and the Countess Krak.

"Oh," said Delbert Second, "Ah'm goin' to love it here. Jus' smell that breeze from the othah fahms. What a beeootiful aroma of pigs!"

"Hey, Bang-Bang," said Heller, looking around to where Bang-Bang was leaning on a post. "I don't see any house."

"That's how come we could get the place," said Bang-Bang. "It burned down. I took it up with Twoey and he said it didn't matter. He'd sleep in the pens."

"No," said Heller. "That won't do."

"It's just fahn with me," said the boy. "These yere

two men that come with the place and me will make out great."

Heller looked at two very dirty men who stood nearby, evidently Armenians. They were nodding brightly.

"Dear," said the Countess in a low voice, "I think we had better leave them the land yacht."

"They'd ruin it," said Heller.

"No," said the Countess. "I will have to be coming back and forth to continue his training and I can't work in a pigsty: trying to do that has been the trouble. Now, this has been a good crew: unemployment is high and they'd just be out of work. So we will just leave the drivers and mechanic and stewardesses here to look after the vehicles and the boy. It isn't costing anything, as I can just have Bang-Bang call Mike Mutazione and have him continue their wages and any farm expenses on my Squeeza credit card. We can simply take the jeep back to the office."

"Well, all right," said Heller. "But they'll need the jeep to operate this place."

The Countess looked at him and then smiled brightly. She beckoned to Bang-Bang and they went inside the land yacht.

The rental trucks, job finished, had departed. Heller made some arm signals and presently had the two retired Greyhound bus drivers, the mechanic and the two aged stewardesses around him.

I watched bitterly. As a Fleet officer he didn't have any idea at all of firing people the way you are supposed to do in business.

"You've done a great job," said Heller.

They all smiled.

"Would you like to stay on and take care of the vehicles and the boy?"

They cheered.

"I'll also see that you get a voyage bonus of a thousand apiece," said Heller.

They cheered louder.

I wondered if I could stand any more of this.

The Countess Krak came out of the land yacht with Bang-Bang. "Guess what," she cried. "We're in luck! Just today Mike Mutazione got in an almost brand-new Rolls Royce Silver Spirit. And he's got a real English chauffeur that used to work for a lord. I can use it to commute back and forth to finish the training. We're only a few miles from Newark and he's sending it over this evening. A bargain, too, only fifty thousand dollars. But that doesn't matter, as it goes on my credit card."

I knew I had left the viewer on too long!

I paced back and forth. Mudur Zengin would be in a frenzy with all these bills coming in. My security deposit must be going up in smoke.

Oh, I had to get this handled for more reasons than one!

The trap I had laid absolutely HAD to work!

Because it had been late, they stayed the night at the farm, settling the boy in.

Madison had his front page:

WHIZ KID REFORMS

JOINS WASP PURITY LEAGUE

"No more crime," was the startling statement of the notorious outlaw, Wister, as he deplaned, handcuffed, in Trenton, New Jersey. (See photos page 8.)

"While hiding out," he said, "I was a paragon of virtue. I realized crime did not pay. And when I was approached by an officer of the WASP Purity League on the plane, I instantly signed the pledge."

Judges in both Kansas and New Jersey breathed a sigh of relief. Judge Hanger of the Supreme Court stated, "When an outlaw such as Wister can stand forth pure and noble and vow such a vow, there is new hope for American youth."

Wister, the only man in four centuries to steal an American city...

I was not quite sure which direction this was going to go. But I knew Madison by now. He was on the trail of something hot.

I vigilantly watched the viewers, hoping that Heller or Krak would pick up a paper or someone would call it to their attention.

They rode that morning to the Empire State Building in the Rolls Royce Silver Spirit. A solemn English

chauffeur courteously opened the door and said, in cultured accents, he would send their baggage up.