Mission: Earth "Death Quest" (22 page)

Heller and Krak ascended and walked down the halls. He opened the door with the jet plane on it and for an instant I thought somebody must have been in ambush and that they were being attacked.

Of all the peculiar, screeching noises!

It was the cat!

It sprang, yowling, into Heller's arms, sprang off, sprang into Krak's arms, leaped into the center of the room and ran in circles, making wild noises the whole time! What a fuss! It took him minutes to finally consent to be held by Krak and petted. What peculiar conduct for a cat: they are so aloof and disdainful. Could he have missed them?

But I had no time to ponder that. Here came Izzy! I have seldom seen him so wild with excitement.

With no preamble, no hello, Izzy cried, "Have I got news for you!" He was waving legal documents like banners. "Sit down. You won't be able to stand this standing up."

They sat down. Izzy pranced before them. "Mamie Boomp has sold Atlantic City! She unloaded it on the Crown Prince of Saudi Yemen! He has been slavering to get a chance to get his hands on Miss Americas. Now he can have his pick of them year after year. Oh, what a businesswoman Mamie Boomp turned out to be! She sold it for cash with plenty of operating expenses available and some other properties the Crown Prince already had. He's honoring the staff contracts and has retained Mamie Boomp as president and general manager."

"Oh, that's great!" said Heller.

"Mamie Boomp is a smart woman," said Krak.

"No, no, that isn't the good news. Come with me!"

He went tearing out. They followed him. Heller managed to steer him into the Silver Spirit instead of a cab and they went roaring uptown at Izzy's excited directions.

They were on Central Park West. Izzy pointed to an underground entrance and they drove into a spacious garage. He got out, still beckoning. He pushed them into an elevator.

When the elevator stopped, Izzy did not open the door. He said, "Now, you will remember when I said that Miss Joy was far too beautiful to live in an office. Well, that's oh, so true. Part of the price the Crown Prince paid was eight posh apartment houses in Manhattan. Now LOOK!"

He threw open the elevator door.

They were pzing at a roof garden. A vast expanse of cultivated paths and plants with areas glassed in.

Izzy took them over to the edge and threw out his arms. And there before them, many stories below, lay Central Park.

He didn't give them any time to look. He was rattling a ring of keys. He rushed to a tall glass door and unlocked it.

Before them spread a pillared interior. The columns were light tan and around them coiled designs in glittering stones, edged and banded in gold. The floor was colored marble squares. The furniture was scrolled and curving. A very posh place. Like a palace!

"Fifteen rooms!" said Izzy. "Surrounded by so much roof garden it takes three gardeners to keep it up. And the whole next floor below for servants and storage. Do you like it?"

"Beautiful!" said the Countess Krak.

"It's your home," said Izzy.

The following day, I brushed the cockroaches off the table and put down the stack of papers. Madison had front page again:

NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR PETITIONED BY PURITY LEAGUE

WHIZ KID CASE BEFORE GOVERNOR

With mass demonstrations (see photos page 12) and avalanches of telegrams, the governor of New Jersey was pleaded with today to have clemency in the case of the notorious outlaw, Wister, known as the Whiz Kid.

Different variations of the story appeared in all the papers. It was national press.

I knew it would be on TV and radio. The WASP Purity League has real clout.

I watched the viewers to get a reaction from Heller and Krak.

They were very busy moving into their garden penthouse. The Porsche had been put in the garage and under the charge of the chauffeur and Heller was trying to explain to him how come this Porsche didn't burn

"petrol" but blocks of asphalt and didn't need refuelling more often than once a month. The chauffeur was being doubtful but if the master said so about the Porsche, that was fine, as it was German and who could tell about
them.
But when Heller suggested changing the Silver Spirit, that was different: it was an English car and a proposed change of its motor in any way would have to be passed upon by the Archbishop of Canterbury before it was done. And did the master know that the first Rolls automobiles had locks on their bonnets and only the company had a key? No? Well, he thought Heller might not know, being an American. So the Rolls would do better to just go on being a Rolls, and guzzling gas or not, tradition was tradition, right? Not to be flouted.

The Countess Krak was having better luck. Izzy had caught her with a broom in her hand and, a bit reverently, had taken it away from her and steered her into the "Etruscan Salon" where she was faced with a horde of domestics from which to choose her staff. Izzy explained the need of three gardeners, a butler, a chef, a second cook, two housemen, a chambermaid, two security men and, last but not least, a lady's maid for herself. He apologized that he could not presume to choose her staff.

So she was involved with picking them out, only to find that they had already been screened, that there were just exactly twelve people who just exactly fitted the posts named. So she "chose" them and Izzy instantly handed the broom over to a houseman and they all promptly went to work under the eagle eye of the butler.

I still watched to see if they would pick up a paper.

The Countess was driven over to New Jersey to do some training of the son.

Heller was trying to put his "study," or den, to rights and stow his things.

The only other thing that happened was that his tailor arrived to measure him for his uniforms. It appeared that there would be a regimental ball in a couple of days and Heller, though an ROTC member, seemed to have neglected to get any uniforms.

Bang-Bang was on the scene, giving the tailor some tips. It seemed that an officer of the ROTC-Wister was a second lieutenant, being a senior-and an officer of the U. S. Army wore the same uniforms except for a shoulder patch which was green with a red bar, a gold torch and had ARMY ROTC letters on it in white.

"I haven't rubbed my brains raw and marched my legs to nubs to have you coming out looking like an Army bum," Bang-Bang explained, and proceeded to give the tailor the subtle tips that somehow converted the uniform, without changing its colors, slightly in the direction of a "self-respecting Marines officer."

Well, I thought, they are busy today. Maybe they will look at the papers tomorrow.

Tomorrow came. Sure enough, Madison had more headlines.

WHIZ KID PARDONED

GOVERNOR ANSWERS NATION'S PRAYERS

It was announced tonight to cheering throngs that Wister, the Whiz Kid, has been pardoned unconditionally by the governor of New Jersey.

The glad news was celebrated by torchlight parades. (See photos, center spread.)

"It is not that I yielded solely to the pressures

of the WASP Purity League," the governor said. "It is obvious that the young man has reformed and is, in his own way, a saint. Besides, Atlantic City was not given to Nevada but has been returned to the territorial jurisdiction of New Jersey by its new owner, the Crown Prince of Saudi \femen, in a special treaty agreeing to let New Jersey tax collectors in, providing they also promise to use their bribes in gambling."

Actually, I didn't much care for the story. A lot of the papers sort of went overboard on how the Whiz Kid was merely the victim of environmental underprivilege-ment and was at heart a sterling example of moral probity. Several mentioned the redeeming factor that not a single shadow of sexual immorality blotted his past.

I watched the viewers anxiously to see if there was any reaction to this. I even sat up the whole evening, glued to the screens, hoping that in some unguarded moment somebody would mention that Heller had been pardoned.

They were at the regimental ball. It was a very colorful affair, held beneath the draping flags of the New York Regiment Armory. A military band was trying to play hot pop.

Heller was resplendent in his uniform. Nobody seemed to know him, which was not strange as this was the first contact he had ever had personally with the ROTC. They probably thought he was some ROTC second lieutenant from Boston, as one officer asked him how things were, up that way.

The Countess Krak was resplendent in a white silvery evening gown that must have cost me ten thousand bucks, (bleep) her. The men she was dancing with seemed absolutely overwhelmed, gazing at her, the idiots. The women were more sensible: they had daggers in their eyes.

Colonel Tanc, whom I eagerly hoped would instantly arrest her or do something else to bring her down, merely bowed, his face quite red, a model of proper decorum.

I was quite put out by the affair. Those uniformed popinjays and the empty-headed belles that swarmed around the regimental ballroom, including their senior officers, were just too plain stupid to realize they had a pair of extraterrestrials dancing in their midst. How were things going in Boston, indeed! How were things going on Voltar was more like it. Had Lombar asserted Grand Council control as yet? Did I have my orders to kill them?

They didn't mention a single word about the pardon!

The next morning Madison again had his front page. He was really batting high!

WHIZ KID HONORED BY WASP PURITY LEAGUE

HIGH APPOINTMENT

GIVEN AT PARDON

CELEBRATION BANQUET

At a fund-raising dinner last night, the age-old tradition of the WASP Purity League was broken unanimously.

An outlaw, Wister, the Whiz Kid, guest of honor, was appointed to high-official rank.

In the appointment speech, the President of the WASP Purity League, Agatha Prim, said, "It is my privilege to appoint Gerry Wister VICE-President in Charge of Intolerance. We have examined this from every side and can find no slightest hint of real misconduct in his past. He is an unstained knight who has never stooped to gratify gross sexual appetites. His theft of Atlantic City can be looked upon as a gesture of protest against vice and gambling and evil."

The dinner, attended by everyone that mattered in the Four Hundred, raised funds for the Campaign for Suppression of Puerto Ricans, whose sexual licentiousness has long been a target of the League.

The Whiz Kid, in accepting the appointment, said, "I have never raised so much as a finger in lust in my whole life. I shall immediately use my influence to prohibit the Simmons Mattress Company from making double beds."

I held my breath. While Heller and the Countess had been carousing at the regimental ball, did they at all suspect what was going on in the real world of the media?

I clamped on to the viewers. The Countess and Heller were having a leisurely breakfast in the spring sun on the garden terrace of the penthouse. The butler appeared to serve Heller more Bavarian Mocha Mint. There was a newspaper on the tray!

The Countess sighed. "I have to go over to New Jersey apin today. I have to wash my hair every time I go over there to get the smell of pigs out."

"How's it going?" said Heller, sipping his mocha.

"Well, one thing worries me a bit. Most of the time Twoey is all right but there's some kind of viciousness hidden in his makeup that I can only suppose must be hereditary."

"Such as?"

"When people get in his way, he begins to mutter that human beings ought to be sent to the slaughter pens."

"Hey, that's too like the Rockecenter family," said Heller. "It might be dangerous to leave him in charge of the planet."

"Well, there's one saving grace, darling. He thinks the sun rises and sets on his brother, Jet. He'll do anything you say."

"Wait," Heller said. "I know he seems to like me but I didn't think it went that far."

"Oh, yes. You're very charming, you know. And also, strangely enough, ever since he met Izzy, Twoey is absolutely terrified of doing something that Izzy does not like."

"Whoa," said Heller. "Much as I admire him, this is the first time I ever heard of anything being terrified of Izzy Epstein."

Very primly, the Countess said, "Well, it's a fact!"

Heller looked at her suspiciously. "Dear, are you sure you aren't tampering with Twoey's basic personality?"

"Me, Jettero?" she said.

Oh, she might fool Heller. She might blind the rest of the world with her innocent face and extreme beauty. But she didn't fool me. I saw through her plot at once!

She was preparing a puppet emperor for Earth just so she could go home and get married! Women will stoop to anything to gain their foul and despicable ends. She was even putting up with pig aroma just to eventually get her own way!

The newspaper lay neglected when they left the table. I knew Madison. It was really just as well that they did not suspect the trap he must be baiting.

The very next day, I could not buy all the papers. My money was running out. And it was a shame not to have every single front page, New York and across the world. For that sterling, priceless Madison, doing anything to retain his front page, as I knew he eventually would, sprung his trap.

The story was absolutely gorgeous!

Headlines! Big ones! Glaring!

WHIZ KID NAMED IN PATERNITY SUIT

FARMER'S DAUGHTER SUES FOR $2 BILLION!

Attorneys Dingaling, Chase and Ambo today filed a two-billion-dollar suit against Wister, the Whiz Kid, on behalf of Maizie Spread of Corn-hole, Kansas, stating paternity out of wedlock had been malfeased.

Alleging that the notorious outlaw continuously rolled her in the hay while hiding out on her father's farm, to which he came a year ago, the innocent girl said, sobbing, in a press conference