"Miraculous!" said Lombar, still staring at the book. "Crobe? A hero?" Yet here were touched-up pictures of Crobe, front page! Laudatory! Paper after paper!
"There, you see? And that's just an exercise to try my muscle. A nothing."
"Madison, if you can make them think that that demented old criminal is a hero, then it should be no difficulty at all to make a deserving, preselected man like me..."
"An emperor," Madison finished for him.
Hisst's yellow eyes grew round and then began to glow. He stood up, towering over Madison a foot. He took one of Madison's hands in his and stroked it. Then he turned and bawled toward the door, "CHIEF CLERK! GIVE THIS MAN MADISON EVERYTHING HE WANTS! EVERYTHING, YOU UNDERSTAND, OR I WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD!"
Chapter 4
Outside the sun had almost set. The square was nearly deserted and the Model 99 looked lonely in the rubble.
Madison handed Cun an enormous stack of printouts, gave Flick an address card and got in.
"You had us worried," said Flick as he got the Model 99 moving. "Cun was talking to the driver of that general's tank beside us: he said that was the whole Apparatus General Staff in there planning a full-scale invasion. When he said 'Blito-P3' we flipped! Ain't that the planet you're from?"
Madison was lost in thought and did not reply.
"Now, I'm from Calabar," said Flick. "All that war over there worries me. They slaughter whole towns, butcher the kids, rape the women, burn the lot. I should think your hair was standing on end thinking of the Apparatus invading your planet."
"Oh, war is just war," said Madison in a bored voice. "I'm a PR man. Most wars are started by PRs. So what's there to be excited about?"
"Listen to that, Cun," said Flick. "What a cool one! But I guess that kind of attitude goes along with being a murderer. And speaking of murder, get your stinger out, Cun. This neighborhood we're moving into is a perfect '
X
marks the spot.'"
They pulled up before a place that was more fallen down than standing: the reek of garbage assailed their noses. Madison walked up some steps at the risk of a broken ankle and banged on a door.
A man with two tufts of gray hair standing out on either side of his head poked his nose out. "Go away. I've just this minute gotten home. I'm entitled to a little peace."
"Is your name Bawtch?" said Madison.
Bawtch tried to close the door but Madison's foot was in it. "I've come to you for information about a man named Gris."
"GRIS! Get out of here!"
"He's in the Royal prison," said Madison, "laughing at you all. I'm trying to get him brought to trial."
"Come in!"
said Bawtch.
For a revelatory half an hour, Madison, in Bawtch's best chair, listened entranced. "So then," he finally said, "I could count on you as a character witness."
"I'd walk across the Great Desert just for a chance to testify," said Bawtch.
"And if I asked you to give a lecture on him, you'd talk?" said Madison.
"Indeed I would," said Bawtch. "Now, thinking this over, I can give you a couple names. They're just down the street." He wrote an address and handed it across.
At the door, Bawtch shook him emotionally by the hand. "Count on me, Madison."
They rolled around the corner and down a hill. They halted before a very decayed boarding house-For Gentlemen Officers, it said on a twisted sign.
A harsh-faced woman came to the door. Madison had learned his lesson: "I'm here to get you to help me hang Gris. I presume your name is Meeley. You were once his landlady."
"To help you hang..." She whirled suddenly and yelled in the direction of the kitchen. "SKE! COME OUT HERE! WE'RE IN LUCK! SOMEBODY WANTS TO HANG GRIS!"
Madison found himself in a parlor, drinking hot jolt. He listened while Ske, Gris's old driver, poured out his tale of woe, interrupted with curses and tales of woe of her own by Meeley. He gathered that Gris had given them both counterfeit bills and had they tried to pass them they would have been executed. But, knowing Gris, instead they had gone straight to the Finance Police with complaints of their own. Their bitterness against Gris had bound them close together.
Oh, yes, they'd testify at any trial. Gladly, gladly, gladly! At a lecture? Well, they were not really very presentable but they'd be only too glad to say anything Madison wanted.
Smiling like a toother that was all set to snap up his prey, Madison returned to the townhouse in Joy City. He ignored dinner. There was no time for that. He called his whole staff together.
He stood upon the platform in the briefing room. He stood very tall.
"Loyal and hard working staff," he said, "this is a milestone. At times PR finds itself on a pinnacle. We are about to influence the courses of empires. We are about to direct the very destiny of the stars. Now listen closely."
Chapter 5
Two days later, a very select audience of ninety women sat in the lecture hall on the eightieth floor of the townhouse, conscious that they were being especially favored by an invitation to this highly educational lecture by the famous Doctor Crobe.
They were also conscious, but this was never mentioned, that if they didn't cooperate, they would never again get another chance to "get cured" at Relax Island. Also-although this, too, was never even hinted at-if they weren't agreeable, somebody might forget to renew their free supply of pot
.
What was discussed amongst themselves and to others quite freely was that, as members of high society, they had a positive duty to use their positions-and their husbands-to do good. It didn't have a spoken name but they were all members of a very exclusive club made up entirely of those fortunate enough to have been "enlightened" at Relax Island.
Madison had had a little trouble with Crobe. He had sneaked an extra dose of LSD into himself outside his rationing and two roustabouts had had to stand him up in alternate hot and cold showers to bring him around.
He stood now on the lecture platform, aware that he would get a small jolt through his hidden electric collar if he goofed up, and steadied himself against the desk.
"Ladies," he said, repeating what the ear speaker told him to, "you are aware that as the chosen inner circle of the enlightened few, your... your social... social position has responsibilities. The society we live in is... is unfortunately a cesspool of unrestrained insanity and monstrous abuses. Lurking, hidden, out of sight... out of sight from common and unenlightened view, the brains of men... seethe with lusts and ferocity unimagined. It frightens me to see the dangers to which this society is exposed and how ill it... it... it handles them. It requires stern measures louder it requires STERN MEASURES!" He took a deep breath and steadied himself with his fingers against the desk top.
"Lean forward. There is a case so monstrous, would you know it, that I do not even describe it to you lean back and stop. You are, after all, gently nurtured ladies and I must not speak of it lest I offend your ears don't go on."
"No, no," cried Lady Arthrite Stuffy in the front row, well aware of her position as the leader of this select group. "Go on, go on! Do not be afraid to offend our ears."
"Oh, yes, go on!" came others' calls.
"Look as though you need coaxing," said Crobe.
"We don't need coaxing!" cried a woman. "Tell us!"
"Go ahead. Well, this case, ladies, is so shout it vile that you will cringe. It is a singular and notable case. It is so notable that it falls totally outside the Freudian band of psychosexual pathology!"
"No!" came several cries.
"The case," said Crobe, "is not anal. It is not oral. It is not genital! It is not even latent! Shout a monster."
The women looked appalled.
Crobe sat down suddenly in a chair. "A woman has come forward to describe this case as an eyewitness. Introduce her."
Meeley came forward timidly to the platform. Then took confidence from the expectant female faces. "What he says," said Meeley, "is true. I was his landlady. He never had women in his room. He closed the door when he went to the bathroom. He never spoke properly to anyone. When he wasn't sneaking in and out, he was lurking in the dirt and filth of his room. There is no describing his obscene and awful thoughts. He also plotted day and night to get me executed just because I used to smile at him and wish him good day. When he skipped out we could find no one to occupy his room. It had such an awful reputation that it is empty yet!" She broke down sobbing and an usher led her off.
Then came Ske. "I was," he said, "his long-suffering driver. The deprivations I experienced during that unhappy period of my life have left a brand upon me so deep that my very soul is seared. He used to sit in the airbus trying to hide the grinding of his teeth. And for my faithful service he tried to get me executed. I cannot describe the obscenities that surrounded him!" He broke down as coached and fled the platform.
Old Bawtch came forward. "I was his chief clerk and it ruined my life. The murders and crimes of this man, strung end to end, would reach half across the universe.
The insane things he did culminated in orders to take my life."
He left the platform. Crobe, somewhat revived, stood up. "Now, ladies, you can plainly see that insanity rages. The diagnosis of this case is so monstrous that in all the annals of psychiatry there has never been one like it. I have simply look calm and professorial brought up the case to show you how the claws of insanity have dug into the very depths of our culture look like that's the end."
"Wait!" cried Lady Arthrite. "Who is this case and where is he?"
"Look toward the door. Is the man who informed me of this case still here?"
"Yes," said an usher promptly.
An actor dressed as a warder of the Royal prison came in reluctantly. He was wearing a mask. "Doctor Crobe," he said, "I told you about this case for the good of the society. If it got out that I had informed you of what the government is doing, it could cause me to lose my job."
"Tell them tell them they will all regard your identity as inviolate."
The actor turned. "The man is being held in the Royal prison to avoid his being brought to trial. He sits in his cell, protected. What is feared is that if he ever was put before a judge, the things he would divulge would shake the government to its very foundations. Even if they tried him, it would be done in secret. What we warders fear is that he will be released upon the society through a back door and strew the streets with the gruesomely mangled bodies of the poor and innocent. While I know naught of your
psychiatry,
from just viewing him in his cell, I would say that, in a long career of handling malefactors, he is easily the worst I have ever seen. He defies all descriptions! Yet THEY are hiding and defending him."
"What is his name?" said Lady Arthrite Stuffy in an enraged voice.
"His name," said the actor, "is Soltan Gris!"
Chapter 6
Like a maestro conducting a vast orchestra, J. Walter Madison went to work on Soltan Gris.
The highest social circles of Voltar were buzzing about the scandal and, quite in addition to demands from their wives, publishers and editors could not turn anywhere without colliding with the outrage.
The first headlines read:
MYSTERIOUS PRISONER
HIDDEN BY AUTHORITIES
And this was quickly followed up with:
WHO IS THE
GOVERNMENT REFUSING
TO BRING TO TRIAL?
And then:
IDENTITY REVEALED!
PRISONER IS
APPARATUS OFFICER
SOLTAN GRIS!
Quickly then, edition after edition and day after day, the documented catalogue of the crimes of Apparatus Officer Soltan Gris began to appear, each one juicier than the last.
They began with:
APPARATUS OFFICER
GRIS ILLEGALLY
EXPORTED METALS
Immediately after that:
APPARATUS OFFICER
GRIS ORDERED MURDER
OF OWN OFFICE HEAD
AND CLERKS
And then:
APPARATUS OFFICER
ORDERS MURDER OF
MOTHER OF
DEFENSELESS BOY
And a picture of the sobbing Twolah and faked photos of his mother's body and funeral began to send ripples of rage through the population.
It was at this time that Lord Turn received a viewer-phone call from no less a social leader than Lady Arthrite Stuffy.
"Lord Turn," said Lady Arthrite, "I do not think you realize that public opinion is growing. WHEN are you going to bring that prisoner to trial?"
"Lady Arthrite," said Lord Turn, "would you please keep your nose out of the affairs of the Royal prison?" And hung up.
This, as it was recorded, gave the
Daily Speaker
an exclusive:
JUDGE TELLS PUBLIC
"HANDS OFF GRIS!"
This, of course, made all the other papers livid: they had been scooped. They began to bombard Lord Turn with tricky calls of their own. This made Lord Turn furious. He was so angry that he refused to explain anything to anyone. The headlines grew worse and worse.
Now, unfortunately for Soltan Gris, when he had been blackmailing the Provocation Section of the Apparatus, the head of that section had been radio-recording back to his own office down by the River Wiel during the whole time that he had been shadowing Gris to get the goods on him. And a recording of every single one of these crimes Gris had pulled at that time existed, with pictures and sound, in the Provocation Section. Gris, unaware of this, thought he had handled it with the final murder of that chief. And now Madison began to feed these crimes one at a time to the press.
HYPNOTIST MURDERED
BY APPARATUS
OFFICER GRIS
And then: