Mission: Earth "Villainy Victorious" (6 page)

Madison stared at the picture.

There could be no mistake!

The photo was too lifelike!

Almost no men-and nobody he had seen amongst Voltarians-were as handsome as that! Nobody else he knew had ever worn such a devil-may-care expression.

IT WAS
WISTER!

Captain Slash had gotten tired of waiting. "Blast it, Madison, GET DRESSED! The chief goes absolutely crazy when he doesn't get what he wants in a rush. And he wants
you!
NOW!"

Rushing now to get dressed, Madison was in a daze. Maybe he hadn't failed on Wister. A general warrant? Of course, that wasn't good enough. It was even being denied. And then a thrill went through him. Maybe God was giving him another chance! He must hurry over to see this powerful and frantic chief.

J. Walter Madison, dressed in a neat gray flannel suit and blue bow tie, walked out of the training barracks on the heels of Captain Slash of the 43rd Death Battalion.

They walked across a littered yard, old papers and dust blowing around. It was a sort of stockade but it had long rows of training rooms: Madison, not knowing he had been hypno-language-trained in the past week, was amazed to find he could read all the signs, even Check Out Here.

Captain Slash made him sign a book and then a receipt. A clerk handed him his wallet: his money was gone. When he tried to ask what had happened to it, they gave him an identoplate that said
J. Walter Madison. PR Man. Coordinated Information Apparatus.
When you pushed the back of it his picture flashed on it. When you pushed it a second time, his fingerprints showed up. They must have gotten these when he was in a coma. He pushed the back a third time and a legend flashed,
Pay Status-
No Pay-P. Oh dear, thought Madison, he was certainly off to a bad start! How on earth could he remedy that? He wasn't on Earth! Disaster! How would he eat?

Things promptly began to go from bad to worse. Captain Slash walked him over to a squat thing that was sitting in a flat circle. It had front and side windows but he couldn't see any wheels. However, it could only be a car, for it had a front seat and a back seat.

Slash opened the back door even though it didn't seem to have any handle. "This is your driver, Flick."

The driver, Flick, had a face like a squashed oval. He hadn't gotten out. He didn't look pleased. He was in a mustard-colored uniform and he might be a chauffeur but he looked more like a bandit, and a very scruffy bandit at that.

"Flick," said the captain, "deliver this fellow to the Royal Palace and make sure Lombar Hisst gets to see him. It's urgent." And he gave the driver the copy of an order.

"Wait," said Madison in alarm to Captain Slash. "Aren't you going to accompany me?"

"Why?" said the Apparatus officer. "You're rated 'harmless.'"

"Well, all right," said Madison, "but I apparently am not coming back here. I will need my baggage, particularly a portable typewriter to do my work with."

"Oh, is that what that funny machine is?" said Slash. "I wondered when I vetted your gear for weapons two days ago. Pretty clumsy. I think you'll find now that you can use both a pen and a vocoscriber. But quit worrying. Flick put it all in the back of the airbus while you were signing out. So good-bye and good fortune and don't ever get on my list in a professional capacity." He laughed. Then he turned to the driver and said, "Get a move on, Flick. The chief is chewing his short hairs off to see this guy."

Madison promptly got his second shock. He expected the car to roll along the ground. Instead, it leaped into the air like an express elevator. It scared him half to death. The thing couldn't possibly fly-it didn't have wings!

When he had swallowed his stomach, they were levelled out and joining a traffic lane at a height of what must be ten thousand feet. A strange city, all swirls, lay over to his right, about the size of three New Yorks. "What town is that?" he asked the driver.

"The fancy name is Ardaucus," said Flick. "But everybody calls it Slum City. That's Government City ahead and to the north."

They turned to the southwest and flew over a range of mountains as high as the Rockies, and all before them lay a vast expanse of desert. Mile-high dancing dust devils were purple and tan in the sun, weird as a chorus line of crazy giants. Madison hoped they weren't live beings of some alien race that dined on airplanes that had no wings.

It started him worrying about this powerful being he was supposed to see. He would venture a question.

"Who is this chief I am supposed to see?"

Flick glanced back at him and then looked at the card he had been handed. "Apparently you're an Earth-man, whatever that is. And we're in the air so we can't be overheard. The chief's name is Lombar Hisst. Today he controls the Confederacy, all 110 planets of it. Confidentially, he's an egotistical (bleepard). Crazy as a gyro with a nick in the rim. You better watch your step if you're really going to see him. He bites off the arms and legs of babies just for kicks."

"Thank you," said Madison. But he thought to himself, sounds just like Rockecenter: bad image with the help and everything.

They were going at a frightening speed. A couple hundred miles of the awfullest desert he had ever seen had reeled off below. To crash in that would be fatal. And this driver seemed to be more interested in trying to light a strange cigarette with a lighter that threw a laser beam instead of a flame. The air was bumpy and he kept missing.

"Are you going to be my driver now?" he asked Flick.

"Unless the chief throws you into that thing," said Flick, pointing to their right.

On the horizon stood a huge black castle, fronted by a camp that must contain thousands of men.

"That's Spiteos. The camp is called Camp Endurance on the maps but the real name is Camp Kill. If the Apparatus gets unhappy with you, they send you there to be thrown into that chasm. It's a mile deep. You're in the Apparatus now. By the way, what was your crime?"

"I haven't committed any crimes!" said Madison.

"Oh, space gas!" said Flick. "If I'm going to have to drive for you, we might as well open our coats. I was one of the best thieves on Calabar until I got caught and sentenced to death and the Apparatus grabbed me. And here I been ever since. You must have done
something."

Madison thought fast. He did not want a bad image with his driver. "I failed to finish a job," he said. And then he knew for sure that this strange planet was rattling him: he had told somebody the truth. He better watch it!

The driver laughed. "Well, if you don't cut their throats when you get a chance, they'll catch up with you sooner or later. I think you and me will get along just great."

Heavens, the fellow had catalogued him as a murderer! Hastily he changed the subject. "What are those mountains over there to our right? I can't even see their tops."

"Them's the Blike Mountains. Fifty thousand feet. We can't fly over them. Not in this junk heap. Where we're headed is right down there."

The driver was pointing.

NOTHING!

No, it was a sort of greenish mist.

They were diving so fast toward that mist he knew they would crash! Oh, to come this far and not even have an obituary:

Then suddenly he was nauseated. It was a strange feeling. So this was how it was to die. Maybe the shock of the crash was so awful he had started for heaven at once.

No, he was going through a gate!

Round buildings were glittering on every hand, bathed in a greenish light. What strange structures! They had round staircases, jewels everywhere. Huge, expansive grounds with enormous, lifelike statues painted in natural colors. The giants were surrounded by round pools and flower beds. A glittering sign pointed across a grassy circle. It said Royal Chambers.

SUDDENLY HE SAW TEENIE!

She was in a sackcloth dress, filthy with mud from head to foot. Her ponytail was undone.

Oh, he knew she'd come a cropper. Here she was a slave. Two old gnarled men were beside her, also grubbing away. An Apparatus guard with what must be a rifle was standing by.

She had an implement in her hand. Madison's car was skidding along five feet off the ground and it went close by her. She was just standing up, placing her muddy palm against her obviously aching back. SHE SAW HIM!

Then he was by her. Oh, she must have done something awful, to assign her to filthy manual labor. The knight-errant rose in him. "Never mind, Teenie," he whispered, "I'll rescue you if I can."

They stopped in front of a huge, jewelled building with twin curving stairs you could have marched a regiment down.

Two tough-looking officers in black rushed up.

"Delivering J. Walter Madison," said Flick.

"In the name of seven Devils," said one, "where have you been? The old (bleep) is tearing his toenails out waiting for you! Get the Hells up those stairs! Guard, guard! Shove this guy through to the chief, triple pace!"

Hefty hands seized Madison on either arm and propelled him up the stairs and into a corridor at a dead run.

The fatal moment had arrived. J. Walter Madison was about to meet Lombar Hisst.

I have dwelt upon it at length, for it was a moment which would mean much to Voltar's history and Jettero Heller. And, dear reader, I assure you, not for the good of either!

On every hand the pomp of millennia rose: the golden ropes curved in intricate patterns along jewelled friezes depicting parades and battles down the ages; the glowering eyes of long-dead monarchs frowned at Madison as he went along the curving hall. The consciousness reached him that he was dealing with power ensconced in the awesome traditions of history far longer than man, on Earth, had even known how to use an axe of stone.

He was rushed at length into a huge circular room, jewelled and glittering. It was the antechamber of the Emperor's sleeping quarters.

On the other side of it, a huge desk, carved from a single block of onyx, seemed to be barring a door. All around the desk, machines and equipment had been set up to make an impromptu office.

At the desk sat a huge man, rather swarthy, an odd sheen on his skin. He was dressed in a scarlet uniform, corded round with gold. His eyes had a crazy light.

LOMBAR HISST!

The guards had dumped Madison in the center of the room. Not one to be overly impressed by the trappings of the mighty, Madison straightened up his clothes, picked a bit of imaginary lint from his lapel and sauntered forward.

Without preliminary, Hisst said, "Is Rockecenter all right?"

Madison weighed up the situation. There was concern and worry, not hostility, in Hisst's voice. "Well," said Madison, "he was the last time I talked to him."

"You were close to him, then?" said Hisst.

Any unease Madison felt, he did not show. He was asking himself how good Voltar intelligence was: Did they know the true situation? That Rockecenter would have Madison's head for failing and running away? He saw what appeared to be a TV screen flickering away: How fast were communications between this place and Earth? He decided he would take a chance. He would name-drop. "Oh, yes," he said, careful to sound bored. "I handled delicate things for him: telling the prime minister of England or the president of the United States what to think, things like that. My account was several million dollars a year."

"What a salary!" said Hisst. "You must have been very valuable to him."

"Well, he often said there were a lot of things only I could handle. I was his top
PR man."

Hisst frowned. This is what the investigators had run into and hadn't solved. "What is this thing you call
PR?"

"Well," said Madison, "I noticed, talking around, you don't have a very good image."

Hisst looked angry. "Nothing wrong with my image! I'm six foot three inches tall. I weigh 271 pounds – "

"No, no," said Madison. "The way people think of you. The
image
of you other people carry in their minds."

"Huh!" snorted Hisst. "Is it important how I am thought of by the riffraff?"

"Well, yes, it is," said Madison. "I have heard that you are the virtual ruler of Voltar."

"Well, of course I am! I can see that what these (bleeped) Lords think of me could matter. But what does the riffraff have to do with it?"

"Well, you see,
PR
means 'public relations,' though the letters don't add up to that in Voltarian. The Lords and the riffraff are different publics. But if you don't have the right image, they could rise up and kill you."

Hisst frowned. He was thinking that could very well happen anyway. They were all against him.

Madison saw the frown. "You know, Mr. Hisst, I was very close to Rockecenter. I call him 'Rockie' and he calls me 'Mad.' Many a time, late at night, he used to slip his shoes off and put his feet on his desk and, over a companionable
Scotch and soda,
he'd confide in me. He trusted me when he really wanted something. I was, so to speak, his most intimate confidence man. I think it's time we opened our coats. Is there something you desire more than anything else in the world?"

Lombar's eyes got a bit crazy. The sheen on his face was more pronounced. He leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. "It isn't that I want it so much. It's that I have an order about it. In spite of my being a commoner and the fact that all the Lords hate me, I am destined to become Emperor."

Madison was instantly alert. Ah, he could deal with this. He had heard of it before about Rockecenter. "A call from...?" He left it hanging in the air.

Lombar whispered, "The angels."

Mad knew he had it made. "Did you know they called Rockecenter to rule Earth?"

"NO!"

"Fact," said Madison. "Heard them myself. That's why I became his PR
man."