Fortune of Fear Read online

  PART THIRTY-SIX

  To My Lord Turn, Justiciary of the Royal Courts and Prison, Government City, Planet Voltar, Voltar Confederacy

  Your Lordship, Sir!

  I, Soltan Gris, Grade Eleven General Services Officer, former Secondary Executive of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, Voltar Confederacy (Long Live His Imperial Majesty Cling the Lofty), am herewith presenting with all due humility the fifth volume of the confession of my crimes.

  While I have not heard back from Your Lordship, I am certain that by now I have convinced you that it was Fleet Officer Jettero Heller who drove me to these despicable actions.

  It was only because of him that I ordered the Countess Krak and Dr. Crobe brought from Spiteos prison to Earth. Heller had been moving too fast and Lombar Hisst needed time to implement his plan to move from control of the Apparatus to control of the Confederacy itself. Krak would give us that time. She had slowed Heller to a crawl when we were preparing to leave for Earth. I knew that she would do the same to him again. Then if necessary, I could move in the vicious Dr. Crobe and cut Heller down.

  On the other hand, I figured I might need Crobe’s medical skills to piece Heller together when Krak found out that he was living at the Gracious Palms whorehouse with a bevy of beautiful women. I had personally witnessed how she could kill men twice her size with her bare hands. Heller would be nothing. After all, I wanted to take my own personal revenge on this upstart Royal officer.

  I also had a score to settle with the Countess Krak. She had tricked me into wearing a hypnohelmet and then given me a command to become violently ill if I thought of harming Heller. I vowed that she would pay dearly for all the times she had made me sick.

  She tried to trick me again when she arrived at our Afyon base. But this time I outsmarted her. I had a micro-sized mutual-proximity breaker switch embedded under my scalp. Originally designed to alert ships in formation that another craft was within a two-mile proximity, I had the switch installed in all the hypnohelmets on the base in order to nullify them whenever I was within the same distance.

  This time when she put a helmet on me, I just pretended to go into a trance. She told me that I would help her reach Heller and would let her go anywhere on the base and take anything she wanted. When she took off the helmet, it was all I could do to keep from laughing in her face.

  She even believed my story that she needed to have an operation to remove all identifying marks and scars before she could go to the US. It was the same ruse I had used on Heller to put the bugs on him. Prahd Bittlestiffender implanted the respondo-mitters next to her aural and optical nerves as he had done with Heller back on Voltar. Now when she went to the US, I would be able to watch and hear everything that each of them did.

  While she was unconscious on the operating table, I searched for those two “Royal” forgeries I had given her. One was her “pardon” as a criminal and the other excused Heller from any further missions, thus allowing them to marry. I had had them forged and swore her to secrecy to gain her loyalty.

  I couldn’t find them! They weren’t even taped to her body. I had to find them before they were discovered and got us both executed—especially me!

  After tinkering over her nails and teeth, Prahd completed the operation and put her into a recovery room for the gas to wear off. Typical of his loyalties and priorities, he then went off to his room with Nurse Bildirjin.

  He may have thought the task was done but not I. My experience with the Countess Krak had taught me to be ever alert! To make sure she did not slip away, I took her clothing and posted myself in a chair outside the door of her room. I put my foot on her spaceboots so that if I dozed off and she should try to remove them I would be instantly alerted.

  I flipped the safety off my stun gun, leaned back in my chair and began my vigil. Once again I had to bear the burden of my lonely duty.

  PART THIRTY-SIX

  Chapter 1

  I awoke.

  Some sixth sense of warning had disturbed me.

  I was stiff. I was cold.

  My eyes flicked to my watch. It was 5:15 AM.

  Something was wrong. I could not place it.

  The boots! The boots my foot had been resting on!

  They were GONE!

  My eyes darted to where I had left the pile of clothes. They were gone!

  I started up.

  My hand went to the knob of her door. Silently, I opened it.

  THE COUNTESS KRAK WAS GONE!

  Oh, I went wild! What insane catastrophe would follow this?

  The prison guards had undoubtedly made both Krak and Crobe promise not to reveal the existence of Spiteos, had probably escorted them heavily on board the Blixo for transport to Earth. What they could tell a spacecrew of a drug-carrying ship wouldn’t matter, for it was all composed of condemned criminals who carried cargoes to the fortress anyway. But the fact remained that I had let a prisoner of Spiteos escape.

  It wasn’t very clear thinking but I was in shock. I had visions of being arrested myself. It was all jumbled up with terror of the Countess Krak herself. And all this when I was dog-tired and only half awake!

  I tore down to Prahd’s room. I burst in.

  “Where’s the patient?” I shouted.

  Two heads came off the pillows.

  Nurse Bildirjin said, “Not you again!”

  Prahd rolled over on his side and looked at an alarm clock. He sighed. “It only takes a few hours for the gas to wear off. Maybe she went out for some air.” He rolled back, showing every sign of going back to sleep.

  “You broke your promise!” said Nurse Bildirjin.

  There was neither help nor sympathy here.

  I raced out. I ran up and down the halls looking into rooms. I woke up the night duty receptionist and got nothing in return for my anxious questioning but “The Free Clinic doesn’t open until eight.”

  I tore around some more.

  Gradually, the exercise got my wits working.

  I suddenly remembered that the Countess Krak was now bugged with a visio-respondo-mitter and an audio-respondo-mitter. And that the activator-receiver was right over there in Prahd’s office.

  Thank Gods for that (bleeped),* late Mr. Spurk!

  ________

  * The vocoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: “Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound ‘(bleep)’. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves.”—Translator

  In seconds I was opening up the boxes. I got the power packs in place, the activator-receiver working and the viewer glowing.

  Got her!

  She was going through shelves.

  I watched intently.

  The warehouse! She was going through the contents of the warehouse!

  She would put down a collapsible Zanco medical case she was carrying and then go over the rows and rows of labels and choose one. She would take an item out of the rows of them in the carton and put it in the carrying case.

  Then I understood what she was doing. She was building herself a first-aid kit. She wasn’t taking much of any one item and she was being very selective. Things like instant-heal seals for cuts and burns, rapid blood builders, heart-restart disposable syringes, that sort of thing. I began to realize that she must have the idea Jettero Heller might get hurt as she muttered, from time to time, things like, “He could put his hand on something
hot,” and “That would heal a blastgun sear.” In some goofy way, she must have the idea either that he was shot up or could get shot up. Or maybe that Earth was a battlefield!

  Now she was into little machines, each in their neat packages. “I’ll bet his spin brush is all worn out. . . . Maybe his nerve ends have gotten dull. . . . Maybe he has grown a mustache and wants it speeded up. . . .”

  She found cartons of powders and little vials of liquid and cooed. Little as I knew about the subject, they seemed to be the building blocks of makeups and cosmetics.

  She was making no disarray. She was putting everything back in its place after she had taken a few of what she wanted.

  The next section she found made me flinch. Surgical electric knives and probes. She seemed to think several would come in handy. Was she going to repair a battlefield or make one?

  My attention, which had wandered due to speculation, came back to her with a snap. She had said “Ooooo” in a way I had learned to distrust.

  I couldn’t make it out at once due to the dim light in the warehouse. And then I flinched as if a cobra had struck at me!

  She had found the “Eyes and Ears of Voltar” section! I knew it must be in there somewhere, for I had emptied the whole vault of that now-defunct company and carried it away. But due to the cargo jumble on arrival on Earth, I had never seen it. Some neat soul had stacked it all in order on the shelves, a dozen of this and fifty of that. And the Countess Krak was really reading labels!

  A gadget that detected eye-pupillary shift when someone was lying; a mate to the telescope I had ashcanned in New York that looked through walls; a device that detected the kind of weapon someone would use, seconds before he employed it; a tiny radio speaker device that could be planted on someone to make him seem to speak, complete with waterproof transmitter; an ear-relay device to furnish a person with answers, “Recommended for lawyers whose clients are undergoing torture—two-way radio connections, accessory extra”; a dart that “causes people to grow warm and itchy so they will disrobe and you can get divorce evidence”; a device that “puts picture, sound and emotion delusions in the brain so that the person believes he is crazy”; a perfume that “makes a person say ‘yes’ to anything—preantidote capsule for user, accessory extra”; a dart “that can be fired into walls up to one mile away, thus planting an audio-visio bug—purse-size gun, accessory extra”; a search device which “up to one mile reads through clothes and makes the person appear naked—photographic attachment for lewd photographs, accessory extra”; a headlight fitting which “installed in one’s own headlights causes other drivers to act like they are drunk and can then be arrested for drunken driving”; a field coil that “stimulates the desire to pick up money and the person can be arrested for stealing.”

  On and on! Dozens of different types of items!

  My hair stood on end! The Countess Krak had another collapsible Zanco case out and was interestedly putting one and two of each in it!

  She came to a case of “miniature electronic illusion projectors—moving dancing girls, accessory extra—useful for divorce photographs.” She took a dozen. She found a case of “emotional perfume bombs that cause people to react with emotions that make them say the required things—packs of eight assorted emotions—Caution: point away from self when breaking tip.” She took half a dozen packs!

  I was losing my mind! These things in the hands of the Countess Krak! Earth might not be a battlefield yet, but it sure would be when she got through with it!

  With savage intention, I rose up, ready to rush out and halt this certainty of future massacres of whole populations.

  Then, with horror, I remembered the “hypnotic implant” she thought she had given me. It was “You will let me go wherever I want around this hospital and nearby buildings or base. You will let me pick up anything I want.” And to it she had added “You’ll let me have whatever I take, no matter what it is. You will let me leave with it.”

  If I stopped her she would know the hypnohelmet she had used hadn’t worked on me because of the breaker switch I secretly carried. It could bring about my death! For if she ever suspected what I was actually doing, that yellow-man she destroyed in Spiteos would have had an easy demise compared to the one she would give me.

  I couldn’t lift a finger!

  How had she known of this warehouse? And then I recalled stating the hypnohelmets were in it. She had jumped to the correct conclusion that it held all sorts of things.

  (Bleep) Spurk! I should have killed him years before!

  And the hypnohelmets! I realized with horror that she was going to take those, too! And they were perfectly functional as long as I wasn’t within two miles of them!

  I only had a stun gun, a couple of 800-kilovolt blasticks and a Knife Section knife on me. Suicide to go up against the Countess Krak with only those. Maybe if I rushed down to the base I could persuade an assassin pilot to bring his Space Battle Mobile Flying Cannon up here and blow the hospital to bits. And then I shook my head: that might take care of a space battleship but would it faze the Countess Krak?

  There was only one thing I could do and I did it. I sat there and suffered.

  She had tricked me.

  PART THIRTY-SIX

  Chapter 2

  My watch got into my view as I wrung my hands.

  It was only two hours to plane time!

  If I worked fast and accurately, I could at least get her out of Turkey. To Hells with what happened to New York!

  I got out her tickets and expense money. Then I paused. They usually issued five hundred dollars to the traveler here at the base in case there were emergencies and he had to come back. I opened the envelope intended for her. A taxicab could cost up to fifty dollars from John F. Kennedy Airport to New York. I would leave her fifty. I put the other four hundred and fifty in my own wallet. I was broke, oh so very broke. It was quite welcome. And she deserved to get a trick for a trick.

  Raht. I had to get him off on the same plane. I took the activator-receiver and the 831 Relayer and put them in their cases. I picked up his ticket and money. As an afterthought, I took four hundred and fifty dollars of his money and put it in my own pocket.

  I raced down to his room. He was just getting up but he flinched back into bed when he saw me.

  “Vacation is over, you loafing bum,” I told him. “You’re outward bound for New York on this morning’s plane. There will be a woman on it, in a hood, cape and veil; passport, US; name, Heavenly Joy Krackle; height, five feet nine and a half inches; blond hair; blue or gray eyes depending on whether she is trying to get something out of you or about to kill you. Keep this unit within two hundred miles of her at all times and after you leave Istanbul, turn on the switch on this one. Mark this unit K so you don’t get them mixed up if the two people separate.”

  “This is not very much money,” he said, holding up the fifty-dollar bill. “Have they cut down on travel funds? I think I’ve got time to get over to the base and contact Faht Bey before plane time. I’ll need money to live in New York.”

  (Bleep) him. Sly. I was up to it, however. I snatched up a tablet of prescription blanks, whipped out my identoplate and rapidly stamped the whole pad on the lines where it said Doktor_______________. “Fill these out and hand them in to the New York office. They’ll give you money.”

  “I hope I can buy food with phenobarbital,” he said.

  I looked at him. Actually, he appeared years younger after his treatment and repair. Healthy for a change. “You’re too fat,” I said. “Fat from lying around doing nothing. And you’ve let your mustache grow. She is not to recognize you! Shave it off!” I knew that would get him. It was his pride and joy, sticking out straight on either side.

  He flinched.

  I whipped out my Knife Section knife from the back of my neck, so quick he didn’t even see how it had appeared in my hand. I made a gesture at the mustache.

  He wailed and ducked. “I’ll shave it! I’ll shave it!”

  Tha
t was better. I had him under control.

  I rushed back to Prahd’s office. I looked at the viewer. She was leaving the warehouse, three big cases in her hands. I didn’t have much time.

  With fast motions, I grabbed the odds and ends of the bug set that was left. I raced out into the hall. By opening a couple of doors on patients just awakening, I found a third: it was an unused interview room. I dumped the viewer and box in a cabinet and locked it. I closed the room up. I went back to Prahd’s office and got her grip. I raced down to the private room she had occupied. Slowing, I sauntered in.

  Prahd was there all shaved and combed and in a fresh doctor’s coat.

  Krak entered the door with her cases. En route she had picked up the two hypnohelmets. She looked like a walking baggage rack. Prahd hastened to take things from her and put them on the bed.

  Her eyes were bright. She did not look like a person is supposed to look after an operation. She stretched out her arm to free it from the cloak. She said to Prahd, “I peeked under the bandage,” and she indicated her wrist. “You seem to have gotten rid of my scars. And I seem to have my tan back. I think you did a wonderful job. And look at my teeth gleam.” She showed him.

  I flinched.

  But Prahd beamed and dug his toe into the floor like a wriggling little boy. Idiot. She had taken him in entirely! “I’m so happy you’re pleased,” he said. “It is an honor indeed to serve such a lovely patient. You can take all the cups and bandages off by midafternoon. They’re just there to take the redness out.”

  He was looking at the cases. They were white cases and they had Zanco on the side of them, in Voltarian. A real potential Code break. I couldn’t stop her from taking them!

  “Wait right there,” Prahd said. He rushed out at speed and was back in a flash. He had a whole box of assorted decals in his hands. He sorted through them. He chose half a dozen.

  Using water from the washbasin he fixed them on the cases and the hypnohelmet boxes, covering the Zanco labels. He put the sixth one on her grip. They said: