Mission: Earth "Fortune of Fear" (36 page)

I recoiled. She had leaped up and began to pound on her desk and rave and rant in four-letter words that even I had never heard. "And you can quote me!" she screamed. She sat back down pretty spent. "But of course their failure to pass it is unthinkable. All the women of the world would tear them into little bits with their fingernails, laughing all the while!"

I don't like to see women get upset. It recoils on one. I decided I had better calm her down, put her mind on gentle hills and chuckling brooks. I had to dim down that insane glare which still made caldrons of her eyes. I said, "I understand you also teach Nature Appreciation."

The glare got worse!"Throgapple, there was once a time when I enjoyed those little Sunday rambles in the woods. I could cheerily chatter to the rabbits and smile upon the daffodils. But last year, Throgapple, an awful thing happened. It changed my life!"

"Tell," I said.

"Throgapple, in a moment when my poor motherly heart swelled chokingly up in my breast with pity, I took into my class that vilest, that most awful, that most vicious species of malignant fauna ever devised by the devil...." She was breaking down. Her lips were twitching to disclose clenched teeth. Her breath was coming faster.

"I understand," I said gently. "A nuclear physicist named Wister."

She leaped out of her seat. She grabbed student chair after student chair, stacked them in a high tower and agilely scrambled to the top and sat there teetering. She was glaring blindly all about.

"He isn't here," I said reassuringly.

"Thank God for that!" she cried.

Two students, probably for her next class, were standing in the door with their mouths open.

"I take it," I said, "that you do not like him."

She began to scream. It hurt my ears.

The two students thought I must be baiting her. One of them ran off. The other, a brawny youth, stood there glaring at me.

Miss Simmons, apparently having run out of breath, stopped screaming.

More students were gathering at the door. The original one was whispering to the others and pointing first at me and then at Miss Simmons, sitting clear up to the ceiling on the rickety tower of chairs.

"Miss Simmons," I said, speaking upward, "please let's get on with the interview. Incontrovertible evidence has come into our office that there is a mammoth, elephantine cabal on the prowl to defeat that UN bill, and the editor ordered me to come and get your reaction."

She was looking way down at me. I was probably just a gray blur below.

I had her attention so I continued. I had worked it all out after that original flash. I knew exactly what to say. "You can understand completely, I am sure, that certain parties would give their very lives to stop that bill from passing."

The tower gave a shake. Then she stared blindly down at me, her mouth poised to start screaming again.

I went on. "Working day and night, slaving into the tiniest hours before dawn, creeping out of the woodwork like a vile serpent, praying at black masses and enlisting all his friends, working secretly with a slyness only he is capable of, one person alone is seeking to corrupt the delegates with women and drugs, blackmail and threat, to crush that bill so thoroughly that it will never raise its head again."

I knew I had her attention. I had the attention of the mob of male students, too. It was a dramatic moment. I dragged out the suspense.

When I was sure Miss Simmons' every brain cell was glued to my speech, I added the death blow.

"The secret enemy's name," I said, "is Wister."

She jerked upright in a dreadful spasm beyond any possible control.

The pile of chairs started sideways.

In slow motion the lofty tower fell, faster and faster.

The chairs came all apart.

Miss Simmons hit the floor!

There was a spatter of splinters and debris and then, with a mighty roar, the gang of students rushed on me.

"He pushed her!" screamed one.

"Get him!" screamed another.

"Kill the (bleepard)!" howled a third.

I had made a mistake. I had not realized that going amongst a gang of students was not dissimilar, today, to entering the hangar in Afyon. I had not come armed!

Pummelling me and tearing at me, they bore me out. They got me to the top of a stairs.

One ambitious soul plunged a hand into my ripping coat and got my wallet.

"A FED!" he screamed. "A dirty, stinking, rotten FED!"

That was all it took.

They threw me over the stairwell.

I hit with a thud.

Outraged, they threw my hat and wallet at me.

I outsmarted them. Before a single one could get down those stairs, I grabbed hat and wallet and sped like a leopard out of the building.

The roars behind me diminished behind the drive of my General Service Officer boots.

I got to 116th Street. I was just in time to catch an express train.

As it closed its doors, only then did I start to laugh.

I had done it! Actually, it had worked perfectly.

If that bill passed now, she would jeer at Heller that it had gone through despite his most villainous plots. And if it didn't pass I could certainly guarantee that his life from there on out would be a Hells not even he could live through.

Riding along in the lurching, roaring train, I sucked my hand cuts quite contented.

What is a little battering, after all? They tell you you have to be tough in the Apparatus. I was. And in a moment of triumph like this, the pain was almost nice.

I had struck a blow that Heller would not soon forget and certainly could not possibly recover from.

I had seen my duty. And I had done it. It was the Apparatus way.

As the deadline approached for the UN Security Council meeting-2:00 P. M. on Friday-I was frankly getting frantic.

Four days I had been in New York, four days I had been buzzing and hissing on the two-way-response radio, and no Raht.

Workmen were still everywhere, trying to finish the whole job before the weekend cost the contractors overtime, and the apartment was a madhouse.

I would make one last try. I scrunched down in the back of a closet that had been completed and, surrounded suffocatingly by wet paint, once more began to push and pull at the radio controls. I had not brought its manual and it was mostly hit or miss. There was a needle under glass on top of it and a red button there which should light. Trying to get more comfortable and avoid the paint, I accidentally touched it. It lit up! That was the first time that had happened. Had it been on when I had used these things before? Such radios came only in pairs: they were very simple rigs. The Department of the Army used them between generals so they had to be very elementary.

I shook it to see if anything was loose.

"Yes?" Raht's voice!

"You've been sleeping on the job!" I railed at him. "And this proves it!"

"Officer Gris? Where are you?"

"I'm in Africa, you idiot! Where did you think I was?"

"You sound awfully loud to be in Africa, Officer Gris. You almost blew my ear out. But now I've turned my volume almost down to nothing."

"It must be a skip wave," I said. "I'm still in Africa and don't you forget it. I can barely hear you! But this is no time to argue. Turn all three 831 Relayers off right away!"

"If you want them off," said Raht, "that must mean you are within two hundred miles of me. The direction needle..."

I clicked the radio off hastily. He wasn't going to trick me into telling him where I was and open up the trail. No indeed!

I went into the chaos of the back room and got my three viewers and a portable TV. I went back into the closet. It was pretty uncomfortable, what with paint fumes and scratching fleas. But I knew I had to do my duty. The way of an Apparatus officer was hard, especially in this apartment.

The viewers were still flared out, as it would take him a while to scale those antennas on the Empire State Building. But the TV set was live. All three networks were giving heavy coverage to the event.

Some political commentator was giving a long rundown on the background of the measure and all the national battling that had gone on around the world. I smiled a superior smile: those national battlings had been done in bed at the Gracious Palms!

After half an hour of suffocating and scratching, my viewers stopped flaring out and steadied down.

Crobe's came on first. He had some woman on a couch and was apparently psychoanalyzing her, for she was saying over and over how her three-year-old brother had raped her when she was sixteen. Crobe might or might not have been listening but his vision was exploring her genitalia in depth. He looked up once and, my, they had given him a beautiful office: whole shelves full of skulls and his psychiatric diploma framed in gold. But, beyond noting that he was far from a lost resource and that Bellevue seemed to be providing him with its best facilities, I had no interest today in Crobe. I turned his viewer off so it wouldn't distract me.

The Countess Krak was sitting in Heller's Empire State main office. No, correction. She was lying on the floor, chin propped up with her hands, reading a book,
The Food of Many Lands,
according to the print across the page top. She was going over all the recipes of India. Then she made a clicking sound and the page turned. It startled me. Then I saw that it was just the cat. She started on the recipes of Indonesia.

Heller's viewer was showing the same TV program that I had on my portable TV, only Heller's viewer was much clearer and the colors were better. Wise fellow. He had not gone in person this day. The women of the Gracious Palms would have been there and he would have had a bad time trying to explain all this to Krak.

She looked sideways at Heller, sitting there in a chair. "You looked worried, dear. Is something wrong?"

"It's this UN thing," said Heller. "I don't like the lay of the land. From what the commentators say, it looks sticky. The measure I'm interested in passed the General Assembly. But to go into force it now has to pass the Security Council. The Security Council has fifteen members, but a single veto from one of the great powers can kill the bill."

"Great powers?" said Krak.

"United States, France, United Kingdom, Russia and China. Even if nine members vote for it and just one of those five vetoes it, it's finished."

"What is the measure, dear?"

"Women's rights," said Heller.

"Hmm," said the Countess. She got up and sat down on a sofa near him. "I don't really understand why they have to have a law to give women rights. Women make their own rights. Why are you so interested in this, dear?"

"It's important," said Heller.

"Hmm," said the Countess Krak.

At that moment some crowd shots came on. There were mobs of women around the UN, carrying placards on poles, waving flags, singing, being cheer leadered.

The camera focused on one group with huge placards and Heller gave a small laugh. The Countess looked at him sharply. He was smiling at the screen.

One huge placard read:

The UN Security Council

Will Be Boycotted

at the Gracious Palms

If They Do Not Pass

UN Resolution

678-546-452

The Countess looked back at the screen. The camera focused in on one huge poster this group was carrying. It said:

In Memory of Pretty Boy

The picture was a poor one but it certainly looked like Heller!

The Countess said, "Who are those ladies, dear?"

"Where?" said Heller.

"Hmm," said the Countess Krak.

The cameras were working inside the Security Council room. A pan along the mural picked up the symbols of Peace and Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Then the view travelled along the member representatives. They were getting busy.

The president of the Security Council this month was Russian. He had a big, square face and Mongolian eyes. He brought the meeting to order by banging his fist on his desk. Through the translator who was putting it out on the networks in English, the Russian said, "I call this waste-of-time meeting to order."

"Oh, oh," said Heller.

"I had to come all the way back from Yakut in Siberia," continued the Russian, "just to attend this special meeting. And all because the silly General Assembly passed some silly nonsense."

"Oh, oh, oh!" said Heller.

"So I read it," said the Russian. '"UN Resolution-which is not resolved and if it is resolved I go back to Siberia-'678-546-452.' Hereas, et cetera, to wit:

‘resolved: women have the right not to be thermonuclear bombed and not to be forced to shut up by slapping or torture.’”

"That's a good resolution," said the Countess Krak. "It's the first sensible law I've heard on this planet. I'm amazed it isn't in force already. But you seem very interested, dear. Did you have something to do with it?"

"It's a political matter," said Heller.

"Hmm," said the Countess Krak.

The Russian was talking again. "We will now have the debate. I will be the first one to debate. So listen, Comrades: It is well known that the only workers who can be made to do any work are women. If the women did not do all the work, men would have no time to sit around and drink vodka. But," and he fixed the other members with a ferocious glare, "you know and I know and everybody knows and Karl Marx who had an awful married life knew, too, that if you don't slap women they talk all the time, day and night. And if they talk, talk, talk, where goes the Five Year Plans then, right? And if they make the Five Year Plans fail, they are counterrevolutionaries and ought to be thermonuclear-bombed once and for all so we could have some peace. And that's all there is to it, Comrades. This resolution would undermine the already undermined theory of Marxist Leninism. Russia votes against it
–nyet, nyet, nyet–
and spits on it, too. So there is no point in debating further or even voting, as a great power has vetoed it. Meeting adjourned!" And he got up and put on his fur coat and stamped out of the hall where a regiment of KGB guards got him into a helicopter and away.