Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" (19 page)

The old man got a key. "You want it jus' foah a hour or a night? This lady don't look up to much but Ah c'd make it real cheap a night."

"A night," said Heller.

"That be fohty dollahs, then."

Heller gave him the money and the old clerk handed him the key. "Numbuh thutty-eight, clear t'other end this buildin'. Have a good tahm." And he simply went back to his books!

(Bleep) him! No registration card! Oh, I knew his type. He was in business for himself. A crook! Gypping his owner out of a night's room rent. I knew I had been right in spotting his resemblance to Lombar's chief clerk. He'd done me in! Heller's fancy new name and car license would neither one appear! I was really enraged with him and justly so. He was dishonest!

Heller drove the car down and after figuring out how to reverse it, parked it in the open-ended garage. It was a bit long and the tail stuck out.

Mary was in bad shape. She was yawning convulsively. She felt her way down the side of the car. Then she looked at the tail and seemed to recover a bit. "Wait," she said, "the end of the car is sticking out. Somebody can see the license."

(Bleep) her! She fumbled around and found a newspaper on the dirty floor. She had Heller open the trunk and she put the newspaper, spread, half in and half out of it so it looked like carelessness in unloading. But it covered the license plate! "Whores know all about motels," she said.

Heller was kneeling at the back of the car. He lifted the newspaper. "Hello! There's a bullet hole in this identotag." He bent around. "Doesn't seem to have hit anything else." He stood up. "So that's what a bullet hole looks like."

I wished I could show him one in Mary's head! Or in his own!

He let Mary in and then hauled in the baggage. The place had twin beds. Mary was taking off her shoes. She made some ineffectual attempts to undress further, gave

it up and groggily got into bed. "I'm so sleepy," she said. "You can have it if you want it, kid: I haven't felt anything for a year. But I'd advise against it. You're a good kid and I think I might have some disease."

"Look," said Heller. "You're in pretty bad shape. Aren't there doctors or hospitals or something on this planet?"

Oho! I said and hastily noted the Code break down. He'd slip up really bad sooner or later. He was so untrained!

"Listen," he persisted, shaking her by the shoulder gently. "I think you need some attention. Can't I take you to a hospital? They must have them. The people look so sick!"

She rose up with sudden ferocity. "Don't talk to me about doctors! Don't talk to me about hospitals! They'd kill me!"

He backed up at that.

The sudden burst of energy carried forward. She got her suitcase and opened it. She got out a needle kit and sank down on the edge of the bed. She opened it with shaking hands. She took the plunger out of the syringe. She put her little finger into the cylinder. She tried to scrape something off but there was nothing to scrape. She tried to suck at a needle and stuck herself.

"Oh," she shuddered, "I did all that yesterday. There's not even a tiny grain left!" She threw the kit down on the floor.

"What is this stuff, this fix you need?" said Heller.

"Oh, you poor dumb kid! It's blanks, Harry, joy powder, ka-ka, skag, caballo, Chinese red, Mexican mud, junk, white stuff, hard stuff, the big H! And if I don't get some I'm going to die!"

She pushed her hand against her chest. "Oh, my poor ticker!"

The effort had been too much for her. She slumped down. Heller picked up her feet and put her back into bed. Then he gathered up the kit, sniffed curiously at the empty cylinder and then put it all back in her suitcase.

She was asleep. I knew the cycle of withdrawal. She was entering the second stage of it: she was going into what would be a restless, fitful sleep.

Heller looked at her for a bit. Then he inspected the room. The air conditioning was running and he didn't touch it. The TV had a sign that said:

Not After Midnight, Please

He left it alone.

He stripped and examined his feet. The shoes were giving him blisters. He opened a bag and took out a small medical kit. Aha! Voltarian! A Code break! Then I saw it was just a plain little white box with some unmarked jars of salve. I put it down anyway.

He put some on the blisters and put the kit back in the suitcase, and this time he opened it wider! Hey, it wasn't full of rocks the way it was supposed to be! It was full of equipment? I couldn't really see as it was opened against the light and he didn't look. I made a note that this was a very probable Code break! Those two suitcases must be full of Voltarian gear! No wonder they were so heavy!

Heller turned back the bed and started to get in. Then he changed his mind, got up and got out his little notebook and pen.

He wrote: Got to have a diploma before anyone will listen to you. Then he wrote: Psychology is fake. It can't do anything or change anybody. It is the government tool of population control.

I fumed! Now he was writing heresy! Oh, the International Psychological Association would get him! Fry his brains with every electric shock machine they could put on him! They are very adamant in protecting their monopoly.

Then he wrote: Somebody is selling some drug on this planet that kills people.

Well, anybody knows that! I scoffed. He actually thought he had discovered something bright! The doctors push it. The psychologists push it. The government keeps the price up. And the Mafia and Rockecenter and a lot of other people get rich. And why not? The population is all riffraff anyway.

But then he did something I really noted. He made a little V mark at the end of each line he had written so far! Now I may have flunked math at the Academy but I do know the symbols. And that check is the mark used in logic equations! It means "Pertinent factor to be employed in a rationality deduction theorem." I had him! He was using a Voltarian math symbol right there in plain sight. A total Code break. I made an emphatic note of it!

If they didn't get him, I would!

He fiddled with the lights and figured out how to turn them off.

My screen went dark and, shortly, his even breathing told me he was asleep.

It had been a long day for me. I got up and was about to pour myself a nice cold glass of sira when a

sudden thought struck me, possibly stimulated by seeing him write.

He had given me a letter to mail! I hadn't inspected it!

It's always a pleasure to read, secretly, other people's mail. I deserved some recompense for not having been able to witness his arrest—even though I knew it would be very soon.

I got the letter out of my tunic, thinking it was probably some mushy note addressed to the Countess Krak—and wouldn't she be on her ear if she knew Heller was sleeping in a secret bedroom with a diseased whore!

I got the envelope squared around and over to the light. It was official green!

My hair stood on end!

It was addressed to:

CAPTAIN TARS ROKE

HIS MAJESTY'S OWN ASTROGRAPHER

PALACE CITY, VOLTAR

VOLTAR CONFEDERACY

URGENT OFFICIAL LONG LIVE THEIR MAJESTIES

He had a line to Roke!

I managed to concentrate through the shock. When had he put this in? And then I recalled that Captain Tars Roke had been at the farewell party! And Heller had talked to him for some time. I hadn't been alert because I had been foully duped into taking that confounded speed, that amphetamine Methedrine! It had been a plot!

I calmed myself. Now, let's see: Lombar had told me that Heller would be sending in reports to the Grand Council. I was supposed to intercept them, learn how to

forge them and send them on. Only then could I safely do away with Heller!

Ah, well. I was all right, then. I was doing my duty. This was simply Heller's first report. He was stupidly using me as part of his line to Roke and, in fact, he had no other line to use. So, all was well!

It was double-sealed. But that was nothing. Using methods known only to the Apparatus and tools specially provided for the purpose, I undetectably opened the envelope.

The sheet inside was big, but so are all official communications.

After the usual formal greetings, it said: As we agreed, if you cease to authentically hear from me each month, only then should you advise His Majesty to embark upon the second alternative. And then it rambled on, saying the mission may take a while, that the tug had run well, that he was grateful for some of the tips Captain Tars had given him about polar shifts. And then it went on to recall a lecture Captain Tars had given once about molten planetary cores being generators. And did the captain remember old Boffy Jope, the student who believed planets should turn slower so people would have more time to sleep? And he thought he would get along all right but keep an eye on things, please.

First, I suddenly realized that Heller had been one of Captain Tars Roke's students in the Astrographic College where the captain often lectured. The tone clearly indicated that Heller had been one of those abominable students who are favored by their teachers!

Next, I realized that this clearly meant Heller had a direct line to His Majesty, Cling the Lofty!

Wait! There was something funny about this letter!

I sat down. I spread it out on a desk. I turned a light on it.

It was not written the way you write a letter! It had gaps between words! It had uneven spaces between the lines!

The words could have occupied half the space they did occupy!

I broke out in a cold sweat. Forge? I had almost put my foot directly into a trap!

This letter was a platen code!

The way that is done, you take an opaque sheet of material that fits exactly over the sheet of writing paper. You cut long slots in the opaque sheet.

Everything is then covered except a few words.

Those platen words are the REAL message! The rest is just junk.

One would have to lay the platen on this sheet to read it.

I didn't have Heller's platen!

Unless I had that platen, I could forge nothing! The hidden message would not match Tars Roke's platen!

You can tell these codes because, in order to get words to appear in the platen holes, you have to write them in exact places on the sheet and that makes spaces and lines uneven!

Sometimes it makes goofy sense, trying to fill in around the key words. But Heller was clever. He'd made up some story about somebody called Boffy Jope so he would have enough words.

It had long been daylight in Turkey, of course. I had had no sleep. Unlike that (bleepard) in America who was lying in bed slumbering peacefully without a single care, I was a real slave of duty.

Besides, I was worried sick.

Sleep or no sleep, I worked right on. In every conceivable way I could, I tried to figure out the hidden message so I could get the platen.

I tried to find "Gris is doing me in." That didn't work. I tried "The Earth base is full of opium." But that didn't work. Actually, they couldn't work as the applicable words didn't appear in the letter.

I tried "Lombar is going to use drugs to cave in Voltar," but the name of Lombar and the word drugs... Wait! Maybe the platen only picked out letters! Maybe not full words!

Two hours I spent on it, feeling worse and worse.

I decided I needed air. I went outside and walked around the garden. Several staff ran away when they saw me but even that didn't cheer me up.

I went back in. Courageously, I tackled it all again.

And at length, I had it figured out. This was a key sentence platen!

The operative word was "authentically." Heller had written, "If you cease to authentically hear from me ..."

He and Roke must have ducked into the tug—yes, they had been gone a bit—and conspired to arrange a key sentence such as "Cores are molten" and exchanged platens. If the platen, placed over the letter, did not show up the agreed upon sentence, "Cores are molten" or whatever it was, the message was not authenticated and was a forgery.

If an authenticated message did not arrive periodically on schedule, it said right there that Roke was to advise His Majesty to embark upon the second alternative! A FLAT-OUT, RIGHT NOW, BLOOD-AND-FLAME INVASION OF THE PLANET EARTH!

If they didn't get Heller's reports regularly, it would mean he had been interfered with and had failed. No reports equalled Earth would be a slaughterhouse!

But to Hells with Earth. If that invasion took place, every plan Lombar had would go up in smoke! As the

Grand Council knew nothing of the Earth base, it would go splat, too!

But far more important than that, I would be killed! Lombar's hidden agent would see to that even if I escaped everything else!

Heller's reports MUST GO THROUGH!

Hey, wait!

If Heller were successful, then all Lombar's lines and planning on Earth would be ruined! For his closest associates would be bankrupted!

If it even looked like Heller was going to win in improving this planet, Lombar's hidden agent would kill me!

My head began to ache.

Heller lose, Heller win, there was one thing certain: Gris would be dead!

I made myself sit down. I made myself stop tearing at my hair.

I must calmly work this out!

So, gnawing on the sira glass until I threw it against the wall, I worked it out.

I must get hold of Heller's platen! Then I could forge reports that would make the Grand Council—via Roke– think Heller was doing his job, while in fact, Lombar was protected in that Heller would be doing nothing at all. He would be dead.

But wait. I didn't have the platen. Until I got the platen, NOTHING MUST HAPPEN TO HELLER!

And there the idiot was with a marked car, police in several states alert, carrying a name that would get him sent to the pen as an imposter, a totally untrained agent in deadly danger of being scooped up!