Mission: Earth "Death Quest" (5 page)

My apprehension rose when I saw that Pinch was holding something behind her back. In my groggy state I thought of the Greek sacrificial rites. Now that I had publicly performed, was I going to join Uranus in losing my (bleeps)?

My confidence was not helped a bit when she reached down and jiggled them.

"Inkswitch," she said, "I have a surprise for you."

I flinched. I did not like surprises from Miss Pinch.

"How did you like Spike and Lover-girl?" she asked.

"Surprisingly," I said.

"And Algernon?"

"Once you got rid of her stale cigar smoke, passing, passing."

"As good as me and Candy?" she said with a glint in her eye.

Fear, pure fear, dictated my response. "Nothing to compare!" I cried.

"Well, that's just fine, Inkswitch," and to my relief she let go my (bleeps). "Because, Inkswitch, me and the crowd came to an arrangement. Each night right after work, a couple of those girls are going to drop in for a bang. They're all agreed. They will be ladies about it and take their turn."

I gulped. I did not like the stern look which was seeping over her face.

"But, God (bleep) you, Inkswitch, this is not to interfere with what you do to Candy and me all night!"

She was reaching toward my (bleeps) again. I said hurriedly, "I promise. Oh, Miss Pinch, never think I would fail to live up to my contract. I am a man of honor."

"I'm glad of that," she said. "Because if you aren't, I'll cut your (bleeps) off."

I knew it!

And then she smiled. "But it's not all bad news, Ink-switch. They emptied their purses into this wastebasket. I added five thousand dollars for your great show. You've been asking for ten G's. And here is twelve thousand bucks."

I gaped into the wastebasket she held under my nose. It was full of MONEY!

"Now stop drooling," Miss Pinch said, "and jump into a shower and get the blood off you while we change the sheets. Candy and I have been saving you for days for this sprint. And we're God (bleeped) near dying of sex starvation, to say nothing of getting hot as fire from that show tonight!"

I went into the shower singing.

TWELVE G's!

I could pay my bill to Razza.

I could buy a hit man.

COUNTESS KRAK, YOU'RE DEAD!

I had been told on the phone I could have an appointment with Razza Louseini later in the day, and so I utilized my time in checking up on the target, Countess Krak.

When I turned on the viewers in the back room, I was a little disoriented at first. I couldn't quite make out where Krak and Heller were. It was midmorning and all I got was stacks of books and pages going by too fast for me to see what books they were.

I had to backtrack the recorded strips to find out what they were up to, for I assumed quite rightly that it meant no good for me.

They were up early and, both dressed in stylish blue running sweat suits, had trotted out of the Empire State Building Fifth Avenue side and had gone north the eight blocks to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. Except for the presence of Heller, or even with it, the Countess Krak's back would have made a perfect sniper target all the way.

And now they were in the huge reference room. Heller was sitting at a table. The Countess Krak was working the card catalogue and turning in slips and pulling books out of the chute when they came. She was doing strictly gofer work.

That they were in running suits, even though this was a current style, filled me with alarm. It seemed to indicate too much eagerness for progress and
that
was something I strictly did not want.

Finally, she had him so boxed in with towers of books that she had to stand on tiptoe to see him. She looked intently at his face. He seemed to be puzzled, somewhat stopped. She came around and sat down in a chair beside him.

She leaned toward his ear. In Voltarian, she whispered, "If you would tell me what you're trying to do, Jettero, I could help you more."

He pulled a huge sheet he was working on out from under a tome on social organizations. "This," he whispered back, "is a workout of a mathematics we use in combat engineering. It is called 'Command Isolation Geometry.' There are certain theorems which, if applied, will tell you the probable location of the command post of an enemy army corps or a city. When you have worked it out, you can then slip in, plant the bombs and– bango-the enemy has no central command post and can be more easily overrun by the Fleet or its marines or even the Army."

"You mean we're going to blow something up?" said the Countess Krak.

"No, no. I was just telling you what the mathematics was," Heller whispered back. "I've got this spore project to clean up the atmosphere. I'm just making sure I isolate whoever's toes it will step on so I won't be too surprised. The way this planet is organized, apparently, is that if you try to do anything to help it, some special-interest group jumps all over you. They have some crazy idea that chaos is profit. Very short-range think. So I am just making sure that when I start putting spores into the

stratosphere and get shot at, I know who's shooting."

"You mean somebody might object to cleaning up the atmosphere?" whispered Krak in surprise.

"You never know," said Heller.

"What a crazy planet!" she muttered.

"Well, be that as it may," he whispered, "but I'm getting some crazy answers here. I don't quite understand it."

"Let me help. I may not know your geometry but I'm good at puzzles."

He oriented the sheet so she could see it better. "I'm getting a repeating answer," he whispered. "When you get one of those, it means that your original premise is too narrow. I started out to find out who had connections and communication lines to the subject of
cytology-
which is an Earth name for our cellology. So I made a test equation over here in the corner of the sheet and, yes, I assumed too narrow a subject to get a reliable answer. Whatever the answer is, it controls and commands more than cytology. Do you follow me?"

"No."

"Well, it's like I started out to find a corporal in charge of a squad and then found out that wouldn't embrace the area, so I found a captain in charge of a company and that wouldn't embrace the target area, so then I found a colonel in charge of a regiment. This could take forever. I'm nowhere near any real top authority command post."

"How are you doing it?"

"Well, this symbol here is logistic lines like vehicles and supply trucks. And you see its path of emanation and convergence. And this is a symbol of communications. And so on. So if you can get such functions to cross on the plot, you have the command post area."

"It looks very pretty and orderly," whispered the

Countess. "And, looking at the lines, it does seem you have convergences."

"Too many," said Heller. "And they always go off to somewhere else. Blast it." He gave her the sheet. He was really throwing it away, as he now took a big fresh one. "I was doing it for a country. I'm just going to skip a continent and be absurd. I'll do it for the whole planet."

"Why is that absurd, Jettero? I never saw you do anything absurd in all the time I've known you." But she added in a lower mutter, "Except Miss Simmons, of course."

"It's absurd because this planet doesn't have an emperor. I'll wind up with Buckingham Palace in England or something."

"And then you'll blow that up and we can leave," said the Countess Krak with an air of finality.

He laughed quietly. "What a bloodthirsty wench. I'm not trying to find out who to shoot. I'm just trying to find out who might shoot at me if I put spores in the stratosphere." He was checking book titles in the towers around him. "Let's see if I have all the planetary control subjects." He began to put them down. Government control. Fuel control. Finance control. Health control. Intelligence control. Medical control. Medicine control. Mental services control. Media control. Law enforcement control. Judicial control. Food control. Air transport control. Industrial control. Social control. Population volume control.... He was checking already-made notes.

He was back to work drawing in a large ring of symbols of the things named and others. It was hard to follow the symbols and labelling because he was writing very small and very fast.

He asked her to get him another half a dozen books and he spun through them quickly.

Shifting ink color to red, he drew a dwindling spiral from the outside to the inside center of his plot. He stopped and gave a short laugh.

She was sitting beside him again. "It's very pretty."

"And it's absurd," said Heller in a low voice. "When you add up all the interlocking points given in just these available books, it says the planet DOES have an emperor, that the emperor has two planetary command posts and TOTAL planetary control. I'm wasting my time."

"Where are the command posts and WHO is the emperor?" said the Countess Krak.

"I know a nice place to have lunch," said Heller.

"No, no, Jettero. Except for certain females, I have never seen you do an absurd thing ever. You are always right on. Tell me."

"You'll laugh. The planet doesn't have an emperor and its royal palaces are actually just tourist attractions. But I'll finish it anyway, if you like."

Under "command posts" he wrote in the center of the plot
OCTOPUS OIL COMPANY BUILDING
and
POKANTICKLE ESTATE, HAIRYTOWN, NEW YORK.

In the center of the plot, in red, he printed,
EMPEROR: DELBERT JOHN ROCKECENTER.

He laughed again and spun the big sheet with its geometric symbols and names to the Countess Krak. "Here. You can use it to teach the cat to run in circles. Now let's go have some lunch."

She looked at it. She carefully folded it up and put it in her shoulder purse.

She began to help him pile the book tonnage back on the counters.

My hair was standing straight up!

Heller was dead right!

And even though
he
discounted it, I could see from the careful way
she
had folded it and preserved it that SHE KNEW IT!

She seemed very preoccupied as they went down the broad steps of the huge Grecian-design library building.

They jogged north on Fifth Avenue, dodging adroitly through the lunch hour crowds. They came to 53rd Street, crossed and went a short distance west. I carefully spotted place after place where a sniper's bullet could have hit the Countess in the back. And now she was simply standing still, staring at two revolving doors. An easy target!

"The Museum of Modern Art?" she said. "I thought you were taking me to lunch. Are we going to eat paintings?"

He laughed and pushed her through the revolving doors and was beside her again in the entrance lobby. He paid four dollars for two tickets and walked her through the main hall. Glass and marble were everywhere, and invitations to go this way and that to special exhibitions, but he steered her right on through the main hall and out a door and they were in a huge garden. Amongst the trees could be seen numerous odd-shaped sculptures, but he was guiding her along a terrace. He turned and edged her through a door. A cafeteria.

He gave her a tray and knives and forks and they went on down the line. The cases full of attractive food were all a mystery to her. She wound up with five different salads, several sweet rolls, hot chocolate and three different kinds of ice cream. His was not much more sensible than hers.

Heller pointed the way and they went back outside and sat down at a table. The noonday spring sun was

flickering down through the budding leaves of trees. A nearby fountain tinkled. Spread before them was the garden.

"Nice," said the Countess Krak. And then she began, experimentally, to eat. She had mastered forks but regarded them with some caution.

Heller was an old hand by now. He chomped away and then at last sat back. His eyes were on the garden but he wasn't looking at Rodin or Renoir.

Suddenly he started chuckling. "Crown Prince Junior," he said. He laughed again and then said it again.

The Countess Krak was still working on the ice cream, but she said, "What
are
you going on about?"

He said, "Nothing." But he was still chuckling.

She said, "Jettero, you're always accusing me of being secretive, but
you're
the one who isn't frank. What
are
you laughing about?"

He gave another chuckle. "Name I had once," he said. "How do you like that ice cream? It's called Picasso Pistachio."

"Jettero, you're going to get Picasso Pistachio in your face if you don't tell me what you are laughing about."

"It's just a joke. Crown Prince Junior." And he laughed again.

"That doesn't make any sense, Jettero."

"I'm sorry. It's just that it's kind of involved. You see, if Delbert John Rockecenter was the emperor of Earth, why then, the name they gave me would have made me Crown Prince Junior. It's completely silly. It's just that it is a beautiful day and you're beautiful and I'm glad to be here sitting with you in the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art, watching you eat Picasso Pistachio."

"Jettero," she said in a deadly voice, "you are trying to put me off. And furthermore, royalty is not something one laughs about. When an emperor signs a proclamation it becomes the law of the land. A proclamation is a very valuable thing. Now sit right there quietly and tell me if somebody, since you landed here, made you a Crown Prince or something."

"All right," he said. "You sit there quietly and eat your Picasso Pistachio and the court minstrel will entertain you with the harrowing tale of Crown Prince Junior."

"That's better," said the Countess Krak, smiling.

"Well, once upon a time, in a dark wood, a space tug landed in the field of an old Virginia plantation." And he continued on. He told her about the birth certificate as Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior. He included a humorous account of Stonewall Biggs, the County Clerk, of Stupewitz and Maulin, the FBI agents. He omitted utterly the late Mary Schmeck. He laughed about the fake family butler, "Buttlesby," and then he went into the events at the Brewster Hotel where Bury had bought the birth certificate off of him, made sure he had no other trace of the name Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior, and then had intended to kill him.